3 paintings, 20″ x 16″ Now there are three versions of a familiar theme, Inside Looking Out. Two weeks ago on April 16 I posed the question “which painting do YOU like better?” with a picture of the Morning and Noon versions of these paintings. The ‘morning’ version happened to be my second oil painting, done forty-one years ago in 1973. The ‘noon’ painting was created just two weeks ago. The response was 4 to 1 in favor of the newer painting, with a handful of people unable or unwilling to choose one or the other, acknowledging that they enjoyed both different moods created by the two paintings. The experience was interesting in a variety of ways. Seeing who choose which was an education in itself, sometimes predictable, sometimes surprising. One of my relatives responded: “one looks clouded with depression. The other one looks like there’s hope. Or the one on the left looks like it needs a good dusting.” The comment about the dusting evoked a hearty laugh, but contemplating the ingenuously accurate observation in the first lines, I had to admit that the personal circumstances surrounding the creation of painting #1 were indeed depressing. I had just parted company with a partner I had naively expected to live the rest of my life with. Major illusions were shattered at this time. Painting became my therapy for dealing with those difficulties. Reflecting on this also made clear that the first painting is literally and metaphorically an ‘Autumn’ painting: it was painted in September, there’s a melancholy quality to the light and the feeling created that’s all about Fall. Whereas the second is a ‘Spring’ painting in both senses. Created two weeks ago in mid April, the bright yellow threshold provides a taste of the spring we’ve all been waiting for expectantly. Yellow is the color of forsythia, daffodils, the sun, hope. Personally I think if I had sent this ‘test’ out in the fall, the more melancholy painting might have garnered more votes than it did two weeks ago. We’re such seasonal creatures. Anyway, the good news is that I have already sold the second painting – the Noon version – which is what stimulated me to work up a second copy; but this time with a moonlit landscape rather than a sunlit one. Anyone in the market for ‘a little night music’?
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