The Sound Of Time Passing

Yesterday was a bright day, not too cold (my furnace isn't working properly, but I have a wood heater too), Tosca was on the Met Opera live broadcast; it was a great afternoon for painting.

I began a new piece, even though I know I can't finish it for the upcoming show -- but I could see it in my head, already completed, and needed to get something down. I'll have to put it aside for awhile, return to other projects while it dries, before I can continue. It's the nature of oil paint, and the way I use it. I had mixed exactly the right amount of my blue, just a smidge more than needed to complete the first pass - that's one of those mundane satisfactions, like making a nice stack of wood, or asking for 1/4 pound of cheese and watching the vendor cut it within a gram.

The image for the painting derives from a drawing I posted here a few days ago, so I will title it with something alluding to the words I wrote on that sketchbook page. I am usually thinking of titles at the very beginnning of a piece, because I work on several at once and keep a notebook that tracks their progress; having a title helps if I decide to go back to see what pigments I used for a color.

The words under the drawing are "Decay, of sound, as it slides away from time." A couple things I am often thinking about while painting: Time, how I experience it and how it is measured; how it is limited and how it is not. And the ever-present (in my mind) threshold of the metaphysical powers of paint and the decorative ones. I am not so avoidant of the decorative properties in my paintings as I was a couple decades ago. I still want to express visually my questions about the metaphysical aspects of life, but am embracing my pleasure in the decorative arts: tile work, gameboards, toys, and the joys of visual patterns and color.