Mirror

Mirror

6" x 5"     oil on linen     2016

Two Women with a Mirror

I've neglected this blog in recent weeks and also realize that I haven't posted yet about the last painting I finished in 2013: Two Women with a Mirror.

Two Women with a Mirror

8" x 9"     oil on linen     2013

Private Collection, Florida

I enjoy working with compositions that include mirrors; on the abstract level, they allow me to introduce additional complexity to the spatial organization, and they make for an interesting narrative as well. 

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Other recent news: there is now a page about me on Wikipedia. It was also featured on the Wikipedia homepage on January 21st in the "Did you know" section. (Links to both are in the side bar.)

And today, I was informed that a photo of my 2012 painting, Hat Party, was used to complement an article by David Pablo Cohn, appearing on February 27th in The Paris Review, titled: It's My Party: How many hotheaded academics does it take to solve a riddle?  The author is writing about "word game" puzzle parties that took place in the 1990s in Cambridge, Mass. (Link in the side bar.) 

Coincidentally, Hat Party has a mirror too.

Hat Party

7" x 8"     oil on linen     2012

Private Collection, New York

Red Beret

With all the recent hat paintings, I thought I was done with hats for a while, but one more came along ... a "spin-off" from the woman wearing a blue hat in my previous picture, Hat Party. I liked the gesture and the reflection in the mirror, and thought the two elements with some changes would make a good composition on their own. 

Red Beret

5 1/2" x 4 1/2"     oil on linen     2012

I'll add another image, of another woman in a red beret, painted twenty years ago. Perhaps an interesting contrast between the two, visually and psychologically: one an analogous harmony of warm colors ... the other a complementary harmony of green and red.

Portrait: Woman in Red Cap

5" x 3 1/4"     oil on linen     1991

Hat Party

Hat Party

7" x 8"     oil on linen      2012
Private Collection, New York

Hat Party is done and awaiting its frame.

In my previous post about this painting, all the hats were finished except for the woman's on the right and I was about to decide on the color of that hat: blue or orange, or -- as suggested in the comments -- purple. I'd also made a decision that the woman in green would be holding a mirror, not a drink.

The drink had not felt right. I'd vaguely been considering whether to give her some sort of noise-maker to hold instead, or a party horn, but resolving the problem was not yet much on my mind. The mirror idea suddenly arrived out of nowhere, in a blink, and was the right solution. It worked both in the abstract -- allowing me to add an interesting shape and an extra note of color -- and in the narrative -- connecting the two women with a certain logic.

As for the hat, when time came to paint it, I went straight to mixing blues and found the right tones fairly quickly. I never seriously considered orange ... or purple, though that could have worked fairly well too. I like the triangle of bright primary colors -- red, blue and yellow -- spinning in counterpoint against the green.

Below is a comparison I made this evening using Photoshop; the only difference between the two images is the color of that one hat (and it's reflection in the mirror). It's always interesting to me to see how the change of a single color can dramatically alter the look and feel of a painting, can shift the visual experience.