Brenda Clews: Women In Summer, 2008
1.Prep drawing for a painting
India ink on paper with acrylic matte medium brushed over the drawing, 73cm x 52cm, 28.75" x 20.5"
Prep drawing for a new painting. Combining figures from life drawing sessions and a very famous Venus, to become part my current work-in-progress: the Botticelli Venus Suite of Poems (I've included some tiny bits of text from my poems which may be lost in the paint, who knows).
Quotes from Venus Poems, from left to right:
fragile becoming
on the
wind-washed
shores of
our
being
2.Women In Summer Painting in Progress July 08
Clipped 2 clamp lamps each with 100Watt daylight spectrum bulbs on either side and snapped it. Blue is a bit bright, darker in the original, but not bad coloration.
Anyway, how's that drawing I posted going? Eh. Tinkering, dabbing, letting it grow in its own fashion. Slow, but I'm enjoying slow. My paintings used to be done in 20 minutes and that felt fine then only now I want to linger longer, enjoy the process continuously. A dab, a little bit of paint, wait a day, see what's next. This piece, however, who knows, it seems quite complex to me as I work on it, and I don't know in which direction it'll develop.
I just spread the blue of her back into the other blue to syncopate the rhythm across the page better because alone it overwhelmed, was too strong. I started using watercolour pencils because they're more forgiving, and I can test the colours first.
Do I like it? I'm not sure. It's growing on me. It seems diagrammatic. A blueprint. Though of what, I cannot quite say. Groupings, images of women.
72.5cm x 52cm/28.5" x 20.5", oil and watercolour on paper
3.Women In Summer Painting in Progress, July 08
awake in night, sleep soon, hope, embroiled by my painting, get overalls on, go at it again
complexity of colours & figures driving me nuts. ready to throw it out. obsession. undo tubes of oil paint, try this, that. mess of reality.
where painting has progressed to, or regressed to.
4.Women In Summer -Amost Finsihed Jul25-08
(28.5"x20.5"; 72.5cmx52cm; oil & watercolour on Waterford paper, larger size & press F11)
The women on the right appeared ghostly from a distance.
The greens of Nature and the poppies and marigolds much stronger.
She wondered if that was a statement.
The ocean has turned green.
She had to put the water back in for depth.
Otherwise she'd be flooded.
Where was he anyhow?
Why were the women always waiting.
They were naked and waiting.
Even she, who was born from a seabrush
of sea foam.
5.Women In Summer
Waterford watercolour paper prepared with acrylic matte medium brushed over the drawing, 72.5cm x 52cm, 28.5" x 20.5"
Buried in the paint, quotes from my Venus Poems, from left to right:
fragile becoming
on the
wind-washed
shores of
our
being
[from Sun-Washed Blossoms]
birth of love
birth of poetry
[suffused throughout suite of poems]
messiness
of reality
can't be
faked
[from: Hidden Masterpieces]
what are the consequences
of what the composition
revolves around?
[From: On the Mystical Theology of Spring]