Texas With Abandon, Oil on Canvas
I painted this from a snapshot I’d taken on a Texas getaway with Frank. It was the middle of July, if I remember right. We stayed near Fort Worth. The light was intense, bright—but there had been rain, and so there was a bit of a haze too. I had fallen in love (again) with the fields and trees I saw as we explored (what is it about fields and trees?), and had to have a picture. Or several. But my snapshot didn’t quite capture the vibrant colors as I remembered them (casualty of a mid-day photo session). And the colorful flowers in real life were orange and yellow, not red (gaillardia rather than poppies). So, as I worked later from the snapshot, I took liberties with my paint. I wanted red flowers, in saturated shades. I wanted a tree here and here and here, and not there. I wanted to imply rather than represent literally (for me, earnest copying can only end in eye poking, and thusly, in tears).
I did “Texas, With Abandon ” quickly, mostly in an afternoon. Double entendre there…except not (I know what double entendre means). As I painted I was thinking of my project as a study. Which turns out to be a clever trick, psychologically. If I’m not too invested in a painting, if I let it be about experimentation and play and don’t make it precious, I usually like both the process and the results much better than a painting that I’ve doomed to painstaking masterpiece perfection. In the end (as of today), I have no masterpieces. Only beloved studies and experiments.
Also. It usually takes me awhile to really warm up to my good paintings (the really bad ones are immediately dismissed). I audition them for days…weeks…sometimes months, placing them in a safe, visible place where I will see them often, before I very gradually fall in love with them (if I am going to love them at all…thank goodness they aren’t children or pets). I’m not sure why that is, though I have a theory that it has to do with a slow deconstruction of prejudices. My own…there’s some maddening element in my character or mind or psyche that remains stubbornly ungracious and skeptical of my work…at odds with my happier right brain; it takes time for her to see the beauty of what I’ve done. Thankfully, she does, eventually.
This painting is smallish, 16″ X 20″. It is framed with old fencing, and hangs in my kitchen, familiar and happy.
