“The Ones That Got Away” 42×48″

“The Ones That Got Away”    42×48″    mixed media with spray enamel, metal leaf, patina, rust and oil glazes

Though I know this view by heart, with my eyes closed, this painting is a departure from an early morning photo I took of Great Island from Nauhaught Bluff.  This is a sacred place for me, and I approached it’s rendering with my usual references to Italian Renaissance holy works; gold leaf, pattern, and rich color among them.  It’s a large painting, and as I worked I felt something was missing.  I put paint on. I took paint off.  Torn between the realism of my photo and the view in my head, I found the realism to be empty of emotion and not the sacred place I love.

I put the photo away.  I struggled. I put my insomnia time to good use looking to art history for inspiration, and discovered forgotten references that had already shown up in my painting unbeknown to my conscious mind. …This just in: Renaissance inspired painter stumbles through the Medici Chapel of the Magi, thinks about modernism, channeling Klee and Chagall, while haunted by ghosts of Bruegel, Bosch and Basquiat, as she reinterprets O’Keeffe’s “Sky Above Clouds” into gridded square holes in the heavens…

Fish, a personal icon, appear, and then disappear, leaving traces of themselves in the painting, and I think about the ones that got away.  Meanwhile, the material world intrudes as life outside the painting is oxymoronically filled with loss. Robin Williams leaves the planet, along with Dear Ones of all species, human and otherwise, disappearing from the earth and our lives.  And suddenly the painting, having taken on a life of its own is a metaphorical story about art, about history, about love and loss, of sacred people, places and things.  Just like any self respecting Renaissance holy work.

“The Ones that Got Away” Detail