Past the Great Rock

Past the Great Rock

(acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 in)

This, too, was an unfinished painting in the Path Through the Woods series. If memory serves, it's based on a scene in Little Langdale where I spent a week with painter mates in 2007. 

I used a lot of acrylic gel at the start of this picture because I'd recently returned from a workshop with Lesley Seeger where I'd learned its use.

The Path Never Taken

The Path Never Taken

(acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 in)

Over the last few months I've started, and left unfinished, quite a few paintings. I've written before how I like starting a picture and, seeing what I think will be the final image in my mind, leaving it to be finished later. As the enjoyment of starting exceeds the enjoyment of finishing, inevitably more pictures get started than are finished. 

Sometimes it takes an exhibition asking for or suggesting a particular theme to get me to return to a painting and move it to completion. So it is with this painting in the Path Through the Woods series begun in 2017. There's a call for an open exhibition locally that suggests to me that I might enter some of these Path paintings. Two of them were unfinished, this being one of them, so I buckled down to work, and here it is now, finished.

Of interest, to me at least, is that the darker atmosphere of the two recent pub paintings has found its way to a certain extent into this one.

Sisyphus SOLD

Sisyphus

(acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 in)

SOLD

This little painting has intrigued me since its creation. It grew out of my current line of Path Through the Woods paintings but unlike the others in the series, it really owes its existence to something in my subconscious. Derived from a pastel drawing done quite a few years ago, it went through several changes, mostly driven by instinct. I sometimes wondered whether it would appeal to anyone other than me.

Yesterday I sent this little painting on its way to its new home in Roswell, GA. 

Memory Lane

Memory Lane

(acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 in)

Another painting completed recently for the Path Through the Woods series. The title is somewhat ironic because I can't remember where this lane is. 

Sisyphus

Sisyphus
(acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 in)

Although I know the beginnings of this painting lie in a sketchbook drawing done in a wood quite a few years ago, it seems to have taken on a life of its own when developed in paint. A life of its own in the sense that it rather puzzles me: what does it mean? Does it mean anything? Something in my mind helped it to come to fruition and I can see a certain vague personal symbolism there, but maybe I'm not supposed to delve too deeply.

Whatever, as the kids probably no longer say. I like it and I can tell you what it doesn't mean: I'm definitely not finished with the Path Through the Woods.