HOPE AND REVELATION

HOPE AND REVELATION oil on canvas 48 x 48" available

In San Diego, these droughtful days, we long for rain. We enjoy the sun, but just hang on, hoping for the gift of water. Reminds me of those astonishing Australian frogs that store water, make a cocoon of their own skin, and bury themselves until the rains come, and they can come out and resume their lives. This is the second of my Rain on Water series. It was painted during an outburst of wildfires here; it was an outburst of hope. The revelations of the title are these details that keep turning up in the reference photos my friend Jenny and I took. When I “sketch” with the photos–zoom in, crop, re-crop, envision a painting from a wide-view snapshot–I am looking at big shapes, searching for the design of the image. Then I get into the painting of it, doing the wide-swath underpainting, blocking in the colors and values, nailing down the big elements. And then I get into the layers of finishing and refining, glazing and building up… and, wonder of wonders, I finally see the surprises those photos yield: the splash-back drop up in the right corner; the tiny goldfish on the left near the smallest ripple. In all that scrutiny of the pond the day we photographed it, in poring over that original photo, then in finalizing the cropped, designed version, I somehow missed those lovely, serendipitous details that come to feel like largesse from above. Now, if only a little rain would fall from on high….