What we are learning

This painting was actually inspired by a necklace I saw in a catalog.

It's a do-over of the painting you saw in the April 21st edition of this blog, but it's also obviously another riff on the work of Cathy Mevik, whom I wrote about on May 10th.

I'm pleased to see it looks much less contrived that my May 10th copy, probably because I painted it from scratch instead of mimicking someone else's work.

But it still feels more like her work than mine -- and just because I'm learning from other painters does not mean I want to paint like them, so this one will probably get another do-over before it ever makes it into a gallery.

For one thing the colors are duller than I'd like: they're good, they just don't make my heart sing. And I don't think those underlying squiggles add anything. I do like all the scratches in the lower right corner, though -- and that was the piece that came from the necklace I saw. There's an iridescent, laboradorite-like feel to that corner which I also appreciate.

So. Some things learned, others discarded -- a typical day in quarantine, figuring out what works for you, figuring out what doesn't; leaning into the difference between want and need. It's all good.