Another miserable day weather-wise, the complete opposite of the spirit of this painting, Summery and playful.
Added more layers today and attended to the edges of the colours, although I am waiting for the central stripe to dry (pink with blue) before I fill in the remaining white. Although not shown in this photo, I have now filled in the top left of this painting which unfortunately overlaid some delicate blue pink crystals - which is why I am being careful to preserve them in the centre, if possible.
Working in this way one is never fully in control so you have to be prepared to accept the changes as they occur. I've tried to adopt an improvisational frame of mind working on this piece to bridge the gap between experiment and control - not an easy balance but at the moment I think things are developing well: I get a certain charge when looking at this painting, showing some of the possibilities of cherry and raspberry in terms of colour and texture. The salt both preserves and crystalizes - in many senses of this word.
This is the first fruit painting I've made which fully draws on my previous fascination with geologic-type layering. I'm particularly interested in what happens at the edges of the layers, the connecting 'micro' layers with their small details - food for 'small looking' (more of which later).
