two sides

I made a painting a while back, around about the time of 'Pleasure Hands', which is the last female portrait i did (a woman in green). I don't think it's very good, but technically i suppose it shows a sort of skillfulness in depicting a specific scene. A house, some trees. An insignificant scene, bestowed with colour and fit in to a structured composition. I tried anyway.

I do quite like it. The colours are nice, the application of paint works for me. But that's all it seems to be about. It's kind of banal, possibly hinting at something, i mean if you focus on something long enough to paint it it's ultimately going to be suspected that it 'means' something. Even if it really doesn't.

Today i made my second Feather painting. I like it very much, though the picture i took of it does not do it justice, it does not reveal the many different shifts of colour, the two different yellows in the background, the much worked into feather itself. It works, it's an ordinary, unimportant feather, also bestowed with some sort of meaning, epicness, feeling, spirituality, while hopefully retaining that humble origin. The yellow, i enjoy, i enjoy painting patterns that are seemingly abstract, this was based on the pattern of stitching on the canvas, the different yellows were responses to the dappled light of the sun filtered through some leaves playing over the whole scene. Though you'd never know it to look at it. But hopefully there is enough there to see, without prompts from me.