Black and Blue

If you make art long enough, you start recognizing the cyclical nature of your work. Not that you repeat yourself exactly, but you tend to return to a former way of doing things or to a former subject and giving it another look. In this case, it was a return to both how I was choosing colors and what my subject was. Before I set out on a trip to Istanbul and the Turkish Aegean Coast in 1990, I decide to try painting in monochromes or dichromes, i.e. just one or two colors per image. Here’s an example.

Ascleplion, Pergamum
Watercolor on paper, 1990
15 1/2″ x 14″

Later that year, I turned the same color scheme to Baltimore’s historic Greenmount Cemetery. I added a kink to the drawing process. None of the objects depicted were adjacent to each other. I chose the nearest object (front right) and drew that. Then I moved to the next nearest (the pyramid); then the third nearest. So it’s really a collage of the cemetery experience.

Still Life
Watercolor on paper, 1990
19″ x 14″

Then while waiting for settlement on my Mount Vernon (Baltimore) townhouse in 1993, I followed the same scheme (limited palette and rearranged objects) in doing a series of paintings in Mount Vernon as a way of getting to know my neighborhood-to-be. Here’s as example. Do you recognize the source for the figure?

Mt. Vernon 1
Watercolor on paper, 1993
12″ x 9″

So why did I return to this color scheme 19 years after that Mount Vernon series? Because last spring I hung the Asclepion painting in my front hall and later replaced it with Mount Vernon 1. “Not bad,” I said to myself, “worth a second look.” So when Mark Luce, a fellow watercolorist, wanted to do a plein air painting in the city, I suggested Greenmount Cemetery. Because I didn’t want to get too detailed, I set up about 50 feet from my subject. And I chose a weathered statue because the loss of facial features added to the sullen nature of the image.

Greenmount 1
Watercolor on paper, 2012
12″ x 9″

And last week I returned by myself and painted:

Greenmount 2
Watercolor on paper, 2012
9″ x 12″

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