Winfield, Missouri store along Highway 79
Mercy, mercy me! I cannot shake loose to find quality time to paint! Just finished my last college lectures and am preparing to give finals, and high school has a way of accelerating in the final weeks. I worked on this painting a little last night, this morning, and again this afternoon. I am covered up with high school preparations for tomorrow’s classes, have fallen behind on grading, yet this painting is no longer whispering from the corner of the studio, but shouting, indeed shrieking for my attention. And it’s all I want to look at now. I suppose the only positive thing that I can say is–it appears Icould be finished with this by the weekend. I would truly like to have it signed and delivered by then. That is my goal.
The painting is large by my usual standards (about 22 x 28″), and I seem to get lost every time I get involved in rendering the shadows under the awning, or the depths of the interior seen through the windows, or even the wood grains on the carpentry that graces the front of this dying structure. This morning, I began laying in the lines for brickwork along the left side of the composition, and believe me, I will get lost once I begin the brick rendering. I love this part of a painting–when I know I am more than half-way to the finish. That is when the quality of my breathing changes, my pulse slows, and I feel that I have entered another world.
O.K., back to the school work. Maybe I’ll be privileged enough to return to this tonight.
Thank you for reading.
Tags: abandoned, Americana, antique, antiques, drybrush, Edward Hopper, field painting, French Impressionism, highway 79, Midwest, Mississippi River, Missouri, nostalgia, Our Town, Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, road trip, store, watercolor, Winfield
May 4, 2011 at 9:45 pm |
I think that feeling you describe is what I call being “in the zone”. I kept popping back and forth between the two posts. This is where you add your special something. The storefront windows and door and pavement are awesome.
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May 4, 2011 at 10:34 pm |
Thank you, Leslie. It’s late and I’m exhausted to the bone, but I’m glad I opened the blog once more to find your kindred-spirit response. “In the zone”–that is definitely what I felt, but couldn’t seem to come up with words. Unfortunately I did not get to return to this, though I ached to. I just now finished my Powerpoint lecture for tomorrow’s art history classes, and though I enjoyed building it (watercolors of J M W Turner, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth) I still would rather have been in the studio since late this afternoon, working on my own painting. Alas, it will have to wait until tomorrow after school.
At any rate, thanks so much for encouraging me with the windows, doors and street. I was a tad nervous about the pavement, but am happy with what’s happening there (still think it needs to be darker!).
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