# 77 - Thank You for Your Comments and the Final-Final of "Hope at K and A II"

                                         "Hope at K and A II" (final-final)

                                          "Hope at K and A II" (detail)

                                                  Yours Truly in My Studio With Both
                                                  (photo credit - Frank Gaydos)

Fellow Art Lovers:

I want to express my sincerest appreciation to those of you who sent comments and questions about the short series of blog postings that show the step-by-step process of painting “Hope at K and A II.” Thanks to you, I received a good number of responses showing interest in seeing how the painting developed from session to session, or to put it another way, brushstroke by brushstroke. Frankly, it makes me feel good to know that my words and images touched a good number of you, and didn’t just float out into cyberspace. And when I have another subject that is appropriate for that treatment, I might even do it again.

Another thing was very important to me: The process was an important benefit to me. I’ll explain. Among the comments, there were some very detailed questions, for example about how I made specific decisions at different points while working on the painting, like why I placed certain elements in specific places. Of course you remember that I’ve talked an awful lot about how I’m an emotional painter and how I love it when I can just let my hand and brush or palette knife go on their merry way, and I don’t have to think out every precise movement. Well, when confronted with these specific questions and actually answering them, I was forced to verbalize exactly what I did.

That means I learned a lot about my own techniques when I explained them to other art lovers. As crazy as it sounds, this process helped me understand myself better.

Thank you. I hope I can show how much I benefited from these questions in my future works. Because, as we all know, painting – like so many other pursuits in life – is a constant learning process that brings us ever closer to greater and fuller expression.

Above are the final version of the painting, a detail of the four principal characters in it, and a shot of me in my studio by ceramist Frank Gaydos, who has a studio near mine. I want you to see the images of the painting for a sort of closure. Yes, this is the true finished work. I promise I will not change this surface, although I still have two more outside edges of the work to paint. (I believe I must have already told you that many of the canvases I’m painting on now have a perhaps two-inch strip of free canvas on their four sides, and I add some of the colors and forms on those edges. In this way, the painting has a certain kind of unity without a frame.)

Another kind of closure for me will come when I ship “Hope at K and A II” off to the artist who commissioned it because the original version was larger than she thought it would be. Had she not asked for a smaller version, I would not have through this step-by-step exercise. I thank her. And now I’m hunting for a scene in my neighborhood that touches me as much as “Hope at K and A.”

As always, thanks for your time and your support.

Best,

Bill