Crawling from the Slime

About ten days ago as I write this, someone sent me e-mail in response to my earlier post here and blew my mind. I was thinking of writing the whole exchange up as a post, and I may one day do that, but in the meantime I just wanted to say that the discussion altered some of my approach to my paintings. In particular I'm thinking more about Munsell values across the whole work.

But before we get into the studio, we have to walk from the subway over the Ninth Street Drawbridge. It's not the most scenic route over the Gowanus Canal -- I'm no Gowanus expert but I'd have to vote for the "boardwalk" crossing up at Carroll Street -- but it's got a lovely view of the expressway and the surface of the canal itself. Some days the water is coated with a scum of oil and other scary stuff which is, in one way, absolutely horrifying; and yet it's also visually beautiful. When the water is calm it looks almost like colored glass has shattered on the surface.

You can also see the giant Lowe's sign that brings this fair city light. It's okay if it clutters up the view: They put in that little promenade down on the left in the photo. Over on the right you can see a barge waiting to be filled up with construction debris, or maybe some kind of recyclable stuff. A lot of people talk about cleaning up the Gowanus Canal, and it's a great idea, but it's going to be really hard, because unlike other industrial waterways which have fallen into disuse on a large scale -- like the Hudson or the Passaic -- it's a working body of water.

Okay, so we've walked over the canal, we've passed Tonky's sign, we're in my studio. And what do we see? Why, my latest paintings, of course.

I apologize for the unimaginative titles. I mean, "Reclining Nude"? Really? But I'm not feeling creatively titular at the moment. And, as usual, I forgot the sizes.

I'm most happy with "Reclining Nude" despite the lousy generic title. If I get around to writing it up, the e-mail lesson I received will make it clear, but the short version is, I learned that some of my more successful paintings have a range of values; and similar, but unsuccessful, ones, are made up of paints very close in value. I decided to make use of this in mixing my colors, and this is the best result so far. (Also note use of the Golden Section.)