#2: The Painter's High

"A Moment in Old City"
"What Now?" #1
"What Now" #2
"Singing Free"

Fellow Art Lovers:

There is a lot I want to tell you. In fact, since the last blog, some positive things have happened.

First of all, and maybe the most important thing, I feel confident, in control and a form of painter's high, when I'm painting. This happened with the painting I've been working on - "A Moment in Old City." Everything just seemed to work well.

Like probably a lot of things in life, at least for me, painting is kind of an up and down activity. That is, there are moments when everything seems to be going just fantastically, and there are moments when nothing works. This has happened to me in painting, and before in writing fiction. But for a while, the more I've painted, the better I've felt. It's up to others to judge the work.

But the latest version of "A Moment in Old City" just seemed to work well. As far as I'm concerned, the composition is pleasing to look at. I mented the last time that I didn't want the viewer to be prompted to look outside the frame. Now, the placement of the objects appears balanced and at ease. The style has to be soft, to show the young woman's softness and delicacy. And the objects and people in the background, have to be just a bit misty so that the attention is really on the young woman, involved in her own thoughts.

My goals with "What Now?" The homeless man we see is Willie, and he's from Trenton. He told me he was trying to get home. He asked me for a donation, which I gave him. I wanted the painting to have an edge or a certain roughness. So the style has a simplified color scheme, and the brushstrokes are more forceful. There was no softness in the scene, and I didn't want there to be any softness in the painting. The old, rusted railroad bridge, the cops, the light breaking through the scene - I wanted everything to be strong. I wanted the contrast to be strong. And I wanted Willie to be saying: "What now? I hope I get home to Trenton.

The first version is relatively small. The version you see below it was started just a few days ago. It's larger, and it's starting to feel even more free than the first one. And this is a funny thing. When I paint a second version of a painting, or if I sketched the painting in a certain amount of detail, I feel more confident, and I can be freer with my brushstrokes. As you see here, there is not the softness of "A Moment in Old City."

And this raises a point in my painting that I think is important, at least for me. For me, I feel less able to express emotion with a very realistic painting. I believe that moving a bit in the direction of the abstract gives me the expressiveness to give my paintings more emotional impact. This is one thing I am striving for, to constantly express people's emotions. And I believe the more I paint, the better I get at it.

The last painting above is "Singing Free," which is based on an evening when my wife and I watched a friend sing in a local bar. There was a great atmosphere that night, and I felt it. The painting just happened, and I guess it's because I was impressed by the emotion.

Look, I've been talking for a while, and I don't know if you have the patience to read all this. So, that's all for now. Until next time. Thanks for listening.

William Kosman