Dancing Shadows of Silence
Dancing Shadows of Silence, 2018.
Oil, oil pastel and acrilic on canvas
50 cm X 40 cm
While I was still studying visual art my boyfriend gave me a painting of his self-portrait saying that he don’t want to keep it and that I can repaint it. It was a small linen quality canvas. I liked it, quality materials that I can work on always makes me happy. But it was too small, I didn’t know what to do with it. It was the time when I was painting only large works. It seemed to me like this small one is enough for one huge brushstroke and that’s it. Usually artists work on small formats before jumping on the huge ones, but I needed some more time to get used to them.
Then, when my uncle send me a big box of oil colors, few years ago, I wanted to try them out, and did, on that small canvas. First layer, my boyfriend’s work, was dark, black and blue dominated. On a detail of this painting shown below on the left upper corner is still visible small part of that first layer.
I remember how concentrated and gentle was while painting. It was so small canvas. I had to be very careful not to carry myself and paint everything around. I was using small brushstrokes very gently, didn’t letting oil to dry, than rather let the colors mix on the canvas like they all are connected, coming out of each other. Also I used a little bit of oil pastels. When I finished it I was not satisfied so I put that work somewhere aside, and forget about it. I even do not have any photo of it.
And then after a few years, and that is now!, I decided to finish it. And I did. But do not have any previous steps to show you. I have searching trough my photos for hours. Nothing. I can only get it closer to you trough detail below where everything is work from few years ago, except bright pink color that is on the bottom of this detail.
While whole work was in colors that was mixed on canvas, there were no pure colored fields. Only intensive color was cinnober placed on canvas direct from the tube and few small lines of red and black pastels. The impression was very gentle, like cotton wool. I had to change that. So I used pure colorfields to achieve contrast. It didn’t take much time to finish it. The right colors sat at right place.
Few more details:
Dancing Shadows of Silence, 2018.
Oil, acrylic and oil pastel on canvas
50 cm X 40 cm
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