Sunday palette
#wrightwritesnow 117
I have been busy painting.
That sentence has two possible meanings. The first conjures up furniture pushed to the middle of a room and covered with old sheets, a ladder, a paint tray, a large bucket of interior acrylic and a roller, a red bandana and bespattered dungarees. The second, old jeans, old shirt, with an apron covering both, a canvas on an easel, a palette, oil paints and a palette knife or two and a handful of brushes.
Either can occur on a conveniently sunny Sunday morning with a fresh breeze through open doors to dissipate the smell of thinners. I use the odourless variety in group art classes. But the cheaper, smelly variety is great for large canvases at home.
While engrossed in my two-hour escape, I overheard the younger sister of Gabriel—my chatty little friend who passes every day—say to her father as they walked by, “Allison is painting — I saw her!” Not a figment of her imagination; a true story!
I thought I should provide her father with proof, so I trotted up my steps, palette of purple paint and paintbrush in hand. I popped my head around the corner as they were entering the main apartment block entrance, and asked the little girl (always so beautifully dressed) if she would like a spot of purple paint on her nose. Her father laughed, and said, “Oh, that kind of painting!”
I wished them, as you do in Portugal, a good Sunday, and that was that.
Although it is nothing much right now, I am applying my art teacher’s advice of creating “layers”, on this discarded canvas that I am repurposing. That brass pan needs serious reworking—obviously!—as soon as the cream and purple paint has dried. At least I can no longer see the original image, the supine woman who lurks beneath this new surface.
I kept to my self-imposed two-hour time limit, and used up all the paint, so there is no left-oeuvre1 this time.
Thanks to the kind people who have recently bought me a coffee. It is enormously uplifting.
If you had a big brass pan with a depth of about three inches, what would you cook in it? Although I have some ideas, I am asking for suggestions, since I need to add a couple of artfully arranged vegetables, and possibly other kitchen items, to the composition.
Left-oeuvre: the fancy French-sounding name I give to the quick abstract created with whatever paint is left over on the surface I use as a palette. In the plural, it can refer to yesterday’s food, especially if served with a flourish.