This was a technical experiment for me. An art teacher asked me to try an oil-painting technique called wet-on-wet. I'm sensitive to oil-paint solvents, so I used acrylic and painted thick gloppy and fast, before it dried. Wet-on-wet gives you rather muddy color. I'm not fond of the dullness, but I'm glad to learn why all those 20th Century avant-garde paintings had such ugly color. I always hated that look and wondered why a whole generation of artists had such a horrible color sense. Artists in a hurry, that's all! Oil takes so long to dry that you either waited or smeared!

I'm more charitable now toward their muddy pictures--pre-acrylic, pre-digital artists and viewers a century ago saw with different eyes. What I see as murk probably translated as proof of spontaneity, honesty, even passion!

Me? I went back to translucent watercolory acrylic layers. Intense color is my passion.

Wet-on-wet does let you improvise, though. I just pushed painting around til this emerged. It don't know if the fox-shepherdess ATE all her sheep, or if, in that mountain meadow, she herded something invisible and quite different... but she seemed quite alone till she started talking to this raven on a rock like they were old friends.

The painting nagged me. I liked the subject(s), but...

Next year I went back in, firming figures and deepening colors.

And a few years later, again.

Still not happy with the muddy bits. But if I'd tried a clean, light, planned process, would she have been born at all?

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites