As the pandemic spreads the distractions also do.

I have figured out that meticulously repairing and adjusting the portrait size stretcher frame is the best move.

Four months I was confronted with the fact that the corners were bowing outwards and would likely shatter or break under canvas pressure.

I don’t have a lot of canvas to begin with and it would be quite some time before I get more if the supplier is even able to stay in business after the pandemic.

I might order some and just have it dropped off outside. But there will be an issue of actually signing for it which is risky.

So the slow path to fixing the woodwork is the best route. I don’t have a design for it anyways and there are two other works that are in progress.

So I have come up with a fix where I applied a clamp to the corner and it actually fit perfectly and pulled the edges flush. I have poured in some wood glue just on the off chance that some of it will seep into the gap.

I also applied it in a way that seems to allow for a counter sink to have access to sink a single screw. If I get lucky this will go off perfectly and then I can apply another clamp or carefully remove this one and position it in a different spot so that I can get a second countersink drill down and set another screw.

It comes to mind that I should do this with every single corner.

And then try to come up with an extra reinforcement methods such as masonite triangles or some other way to stabilize the corner edges.

I can then plan right here in this blog to go out the corners with a sander of my own making.

I also have the idea that I can now request new canvases to be made that will be sheeted with a thin layer of plywood.

I also understand that by delaying my work upon Silver Moon that the layer is drying quickly and I will lose the stickiness and the touch that is needed to do that piece the right way.

I must also acknowledge here that I might be getting too far ahead of myself with regard to finishing Southloop which will indeed require laying in all of the remaining objects and lines.

I have seen the damage that poor diet and a bad sleep patterns has produced overall and so I will redouble my efforts to avoid falling into these ruts of tiredness that come with old age.

There is enough of a plan here on several fronts and I simply need to engage each set of tasks with more details and serious actions.

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.

Цифровая репродукция находится в интернет-музее Gallerix.ru

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.