"Still Life with Cherries"

10x8", oil on canvas board

OK, yeah, this is getting closer to a more interesting painting done in non-realistic colors. Note that, as I mentioned in my last post, the items themselves need to have some of the local color of the item. I think. Would these still look like cherries if they were all blue? And the guidelines for painting still apply, of course. Things like having the focal point away from the middle, having some rest areas as a break from the dynamic areas.

I went looking for a book on how to use nonrepresentational color, and I couldn't really find one. I'm looking into the Fauvists, especially Matisse and Vlaminck. The closest current book I could find was Brilliant Color by Julie Gilbert Pollard. She does, indeed, use intense colors. Where I might differ philosophically from her is in having a dominant and focal color. The colors in this painting are blue-green, white, and alizarin crimson. It's rather cold, with a little warmth in the plate.

I've been feeling recently like I need to have more of a concept when I create a painting. Last night I was looking at some of my still lifes from a year ago, and I discovered that, whether I knew it or not, I did, indeed, have a concept. Leaned against books on the bookshelf to my right I can see paintings where I explored seeing shapes through colored glass, how a glass vase looks with a highlight hitting the inside of it, how different the colors of tomatoes can be, and how to do a traditional still life but add sunglasses. This is kind of liberating. I'll have to go look at my abstracts.

So, at the moment I don't know how to classify myself as a painter. I also don't know if I need to. What the heck.