I don’t seem to know when to stop! I got to an interesting stage but then painted over with white because compositionally it didn’t work for me. I wanted to simplify things. The strength of a small composition on a large scale, in a sense, enlarging one of my sketches without directly working from it. This would surely work if I could paint it in a similar way but of course that isn’t entirely possible. I am still working on developing ways to complete it in the same manner.
Months ago, when priming it, I left a lot of the palette knife marks on the surface. I was trialling to see if they’d contribute to the image at all. By this time in the development I decided that the physical texture was detracting from the workings of the painting. Tuesday I began to destroy it. I got some strange looks from people in the studio who thought it ‘looked fine’ but there is method in my madness. I spent the rest of the week painstakingly bringing the canvas back to gesso. The process was difficult for many reasons but we shall see how it will work out in the future. Because it is late on in term, it looks as though I will definitely be continuing this painting through next term… if at all!
jonathanretallick.art 