Two for the Price of One

I hope to be able to share two images on my blog tonight. I'm still not good with moving things from one area of my computer to another, so bear with me. The first image, "Movement in Lines and Circles," no longer exists as an original because it has been transformed into a second image, "Love Happens," - corny title, I know, but it feels to me like the bursting joy that occurs when love truly happens. Both were done with gouache on the same canvas, and both were fun and challenging to create. With "Movement," I got so enthralled with the caligraphy and detail work of the ink marks that I sometimes forgot about the overall look of the painting; as Kitty Wallis noted, I had "different vocabularies going on." I loved her way of describing my problem - it is almost poetic - and so I took a wad of Magic Eraser to several parts of the canvas and began my revision. I chose the circular vocabulary of "Movement" (as opposed to the high contrast or the caligraphy's ornateness vocabularies) to bring together its various parts, and tried to reevaluate its overall look as I worked my brushes back and forth and up and down across the painting. "Love" is the final result. What a difference in feeling the two images project - one more masculine, hard-edged and somewhat fractured; and the other more feminine, more cohesive, more social. I think I solved the vocabulary conflict and ended up very pleased with my creation. I had a great day today - hope you did too.