Red Rose
Acrylic on canvas with palette knife
40cm X 40cm
Occasionally I start a painting, and I become disheartened with the direction the painting is taking, and I abandon it. This particular painting has been waiting 3 years for me to complete! I had this plan of doing a group of flowers, all the same size and displaying them as a group on one wall. This was the first of 10. Since discarding this effort the canvasses have been used for a variety of other paintings, but this unfinished painting remained in the stack of “to do canvasses”.
My idea was to do a coarse, painterly, textured background with a palette knife, and a smooth more realistic painting of a red rose done with a brush. Once I completed the background I didn’t like the colour – it was supposed to give the viewer the impression of a dense rose bush filled leaves and shadows. Instead it felt too dark and overpowering and the texturing added to the feeling of heaviness. The flower in contrast, was supposed to have the clarity and a more delicate touch. I think once I had finished the background the idea didn’t really work for me any longer. To my critical eye the background would overpower the rose, so I lost my inspiration and excitement for my project and abandoned it all together.
Every now and again I do a spring clean and toss the paintings I no longer wish to keep. By toss, I mean give to friends and family, or anyone who expresses a liking of the work I am wanting to get rid of. Some work is experimental, and once it has served its purpose it tends to sit in a pile. I was tempted to discard this canvas all together as the painterly texture would have been almost impossible to gesso over and use again so I kept it thinking I needed to repurpose it, but not really knowing how it continued to gather dust.
This illustrates the coarse painterly texture of the background.
Colours used were predominantly hunters green, burnt umber, black and buff titanium.
With time, the background seemed less abhorrent to me… The initial rose I had drawn out was still there waiting to be filled, but still inspiration remained elusive. I have been exploring working with a palette knife more and more of late, and the more I experimented painting flowers with a palette knife, the more my mind wandered back to this discarded canvas. The other day I took a look at the sidelined canvas and grabbed the palette knife by the handle and decided that it was now or never.
As an experiment it worked, and I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to enjoy the painting process, and end result as much as I did, especially considering the relationship this canvas and I have had the last 3 years! Looking at the painting I especially like the thick buttery paint application of the petals. What started as a rather disheartening vision it has blossomed into something different, vibrant and exciting.
This work has been sold – as it was so long in the making, and an experiment I have decided to donate the profits to my SAVE THE RHINO FUND!
artbyeileen 