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Documenting a period in my development that could become pivotal

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Abstracting Memories and Inspirational Souvenirs

"Reed Sunset" is acrylic on museum wrapped canvas 24" x 36" x 1 1/2". For sale $500
I worked not from photographs but from memories of Tucson sunsets I painted in 1965 and of recent Arizona memories. First I covered the canvas with bright sunset colors and left it for several hours. Then I came back working in considerably more reds, magenta, white and yellows. Last I did the reed-like strokes recalling the reeds I watched from our motor coach. I remembered enjoying the reeds in front of the last glow of the sunset in a dark motor coach because we were conserving our power not having an electrical hook up. There were sounds from the nesting birds but not frogs. Later when we camped in a different location on the lake we heard frogs around sunset time.
I noticed as I was painting that I was unintentionally but pleasantly influenced by an installation in my studio. An earlier post is about the little installation of rocks I did in response to Martha Marshall's challenge to manipulate one of her abstracts.

2 comments:

Martha Marshall said...

Diane, I very much enjoy this purely emotional response to your experience of place.

Diane Widler Wenzel said...

Martha,
Yes it is emotional. When I am right in the place working, I can paint very directly my emotions. But I am painting memories here. Recalling emotion to one experience of place sounds almost impossible. I remember as I was painting I was reacting emotionally to the colors and use of brushes. I just couldn't get the paint out of the bottles onto the canvas fast enough.