I was thinking of why these two paintings kept failing years ago.

The main reason was that as stairwells they offer all sorts of options to exit the painting but the middle space goes nowhere.

I thought that by lining them up next to each other I could create a sort of diptych but again the fact that they both have a wall sitting there in the middle made it nearly impossible to dive into the work with any decisive lines.

Thus no story could be told and the only impression that could be given was that of painterly effects, colors and contrasting edge juxtaposition between two dimensional and three dimensional forms.

As one can see from the source image of the painting on the right, I had forgotten about every single option and wasn’t even really finding useful reference material back in 2004 to remember what I had first started in 1989 with an opaque projector.

Victor Horta:

After thinking on this for a while more I realized that the middle of the painting and really the middle of the photo was a wall with extremely fancy accessorization and decor.

I calculated that if I were to remove the wall and replace it with some other form that had depth of perspective, spatial depth, I might be able to get more into the painting, which was a lesson that I learned from deducing some of the success of Southloop.

To give the eye plenty of places to roam around one has to push the space as far back as possible, and Southloop covered miles compressed into a 2 meter x 2 meter square, and offered random details in 3D with just the right balance with the graffiti meets cubism 2D vs 3D interplay recipe I’d devised.

Graffiti had more modern and appealing line shapes and a dynamism and emotion where ass cubism was still good at the construction of space and juxtaposition of 2D and 3D linework, all with abstraction in play.

I never really got past the stumbling block but now I may have done so.

So my theory is now that if I process a piece that has more depth of perspective I have a better chance at working out something of interest.

More research and design and drawing is required to really figure this out but I will try to use as close to the original formula as I possibly can such that when it gets around to the paint it is a very certain situation with little need for major corrections. A possible winner even.

I still have the intention to keep this all about cubism meets graffiti and getting back to the theme of the city and especially a subway tunnel or a rooftop or a train station is going to build out this series in a few nice directions with regard to palette especially if I am able to work in some of the influence of Paschke lines and Paschke colors.

Here are some of the subway images I came across that might be of use:

But really I should continue working on my own stuff and develop it out even more.

And here is the best image of all the Horta stair pics.

And here are the rest.

This work is very interesting.

Got the morning started quite well and early and spent a number of hours getting the titanium white from the LeFranc and bourgeois edged up against the mars black and transparent oxide maroon.



Here’s some more work I found interesting when I’d started working on the red piece.

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I was able to wake up early and decided to just shift right to the canvas with no delays and no consideration of any other part of the schedule because I knew that this free time from 3:30 in the morning until about seven or 8 AM would actually be the longest stretch of concentration I would have each day.

I laid in the charcoal black today and almost started in on the white but I decided to hold off because I had already made a lot of progress in this one shift.

Technical upgrade: I decided this time to get rid of “over edge” paint with the rag and will stick with that as it’s a huge help. Just do it at the very end though as a final clean up touch up. Don’t waste time doing it when the paint is too wet, don’t lose your overall flow.

Here’s what I ended up with.

I had to jump in somewhere because it was time to stop being precious.

There were too many hurdles in terms of the color system as well as the issue with the braces in the back and the overall looseness of the canvas in certain areas.

I was hesitating in too many ways and didn’t want to spend another week trying to white out areas to then try coming in later and mailing them into position after a decade of not getting any of this kind of work done in practice.

I have the lines that I want and I know where the objects are supposed to be now and I had to get in there someway somehow and as soon as I started laying paint down I noticed that the white paint was rejecting the next layer of paint mixed with linseed oil.

So I realized I had better start painting straight from the tube and as soon as I started getting any colors on I noticed that the type of brushes that I have right now are not going to be accurate enough and the canvas is not tight enough or the surface is not firm enough and I do not have practice enough to put together the kind of piece that I had in my head.

I made a snap decision to go with specific colors that were different from what is on the drawing because if I went any other direction this thing might look really fucking dumb.

I’ve realized that I need to go on the attack now over the entire surface regardless of how bouncy it is in certain areas and just get shit done and try to make it bad ass if at all possible and if not use it as a learning experience for how to come out this thing again as soon as the next wave of canvas stretcher frames arrive.

On this next wave I have two separate smaller versions set up and I believe both of them are able to be covered with plywood and done and whatever pallet and color system and approach that I come up with as a result of this first move.

So without further ado here is what I got down in a couple hours before I decided to back off and let some of these layers dry up before I start hitting edges with more light and dark to try to punch up to contrast.