Pushing Poppies

Last week, I realized I had a large old canvas that I had started with but the painting never finished to my expectations.  It had lovely spots but as a whole never synced.  It had the color spots for the poppies painting I had been planning out.  So I picked it up, dusted it off.  Yes, that’s the nature of my garage studio space.  And started laying in the ground work for the new painting.  Looking back I wish I had photographed it more through the process.  But I was set on working it through rather than documenting it at the time.

I riffled through my reference stacks for any poppies. Cropped in to layout the desired composition and sketched a rough layout.

Cropping in on Composition

Roughed in sketch for Poppies.

This time rather than pre-prime with more gesso or extra paint I set to roughing in a loose abstracted pattern of the composition in limited gray values.

It was quite liberating to just push, carve and scrape thick buttery paint around on a large canvas again!  All with the simple intention to push the shapes so that they push and pull within them selves.  It’s coming together a bit better than I expected.

Pushing Poppies in Progress. 30″ x 40″

Pushing Poppies is a welcomed paint break started to simply just push the paint around again.  It has been a while since I have had the time and detachment to so on a canvas.  It was a much needed break from all the tight bottled up spaces I have been dealing with here lately.

It is evolving each day just a little more. But I’m ok with where it is taking me just now.