Tuesday 5 August 2008

New & Old


The Gate (work in progress)

I feel like I'm struggling with this one, but I recognise there's been some progress today. Much of the colour has undergone subtle transformation, and the foreground is starting to emerge as cars and people. I'll keep at it until I make it how I think I want it to be (or until it tells me it's reached the stage of being how it wants to be!)


I painted this picture a few years ago but was always a little unhappy with how it turned out. I felt it had become too literal and a bit ... dull. I took it out of its frame, did some extra work on the landscape and painted out the sky. And there it stayed, incomplete, until today.

I painted the sky using a painting knife and the paint left over from working on The Gate, and touched up the landscape a little more. It strikes me at the moment as being overly busy, but that impression might fade in the next few days. Whether it does or not, I like the new version better. (As usual, my monitor is emphasising the reds in the picture; if yours does the same, please make allowances for that).




The Creel Inn, Catterline (Oil on canvas, 12 x 12 ins.)

2 comments:

Anna said...

I liked the old sky rather a lot, in fact I liked the literal record of that scene. You're interpreting it with your current eye. Is this a pity? Both are good work but the first is true.

ian gordon said...

I think anna's comment raises an interesting point; the artist's dilema: When is something truly finished?

But I find the latest version "truer", in as much as I get the sensation of being there. I think the sense of depth is much stronger now than before.