Gazing West acrylic on 6" x 6" board
I admire the daily painters. They pop out acceptable works of art on a daily basis - seemingly with no trouble. They are efficient and competent. I'm thinking of painters like Carol Marine in Oregon. She is a wonderful painter and I love her work.
I notice that many of the daily painters, especially at Carol Marine's Daily Paintworks website, do tiny paintings. 6" x 6" seemed to be a favorite size, so there was a time when I tried to do the same. But I could never pull anything off in a day. I am too particular.
Take this piece, for example. This was a bit of an experiment - abstract in acrylic on such a small scale. Unbidden there arose a theme. It seemed like the west to me, because of the colors, and I saw figures and, yes, a dog. None were intentionally painted.
I did that fairly quickly, and liked the result.
Then I took a photo. Somehow in the photo there was more depth and it was warmer in tone. I liked the photo better. The painting looked insipid.
So I decided to give the board a glaze of a transparent rose tint in one fell swoop and .. I hated it! Panic. Ruined! I thought. I was wearing rose-colored glasses! I was in a bordello!
I had erased all of the variance in color that had made it interesting.
So then I started bringing those colors back, through some repainting and lifting. I worked on it over a span of days until finally I abandoned it, thoroughly disgusted.
I believe it was relegated to a drawer. Then eventually a shelf. I would walk by it and evaluate. And, you know? This wasn't the first painting, that I liked. It was not what I saw in the photo that I liked even better. But I like it. I like the result.
I am going to paint larger. I think if, no matter the size, a painting takes forever, than I may as well paint in a size that the market considers to be valuable. But I know the truth. There is value in a small painting too, even it takes forever to make.