Odyssey

Odyssey
S. Shawcross / 16 x 20 / Oil on canvas / 

Well this was my "dotty" stage, as I call it, in more ways than one. This was one of the best I produced during that phase of my madness. It would take me hours and hours and hours but I think I really was on to something... a kind of deconstructing of Monet if you like where I learned layers and colours and blending. If I charged the time it took me to do these paintings (and actually sold them) I would probably be a wealthy woman. So now I just chalk it down to experience. But sometimes I long to go back there because some subjects lend themselves to the meticulous meshing of microbial dots. I had to train myself out of seeing the world that way. Finding the palette knife was my salvation. Brenda Lee laughs at me because there isn't a session that goes by when we're together that I don't rave about my palette knife. This painting Odyssey represents one of the best, if not the best of my works in that stage.

My heavens it sure is snowing out... Time to paint Spring scenes methinks. I'm actually going to attempt a very large painting of St. Stephen's church. I have thought of how to go about it in my mind many times... Now I'm at a point where I've even done some thumbnail value studies and directional studies as I call my roughs of the movement throughout the piece. Sometimes I think painting is the art of translating the mind's eye successfully into reality. We shall see. I've done the underpainting now in a very strange green I cannot tell you why and the canvas glares at me from its rest on top of the bookshelf. "Don't leave me like this all naked in strange green!" it seems to say. Yes, I do suppose canvasses talk to me. Anyway... I'm off to lay in the drawing itself. Wish me luck.