"Multiplicity"

($40.00.....6" x 6"....Water Soluble Oils on Gessobord)

"Multiplicity is the essence of extravagance." Just think about it. When you really want to do something special for someone, you do it by saying, doing, or giving more than once. It's not the principle of "one".... but "multiples".

What I've noticed about the things I choose to paint is that I like to stand back and look at a scene and then "zoom in". Today I "zoomed in" to capture a couple of pine tree branches. It gave me the opportunity to experiment with several techniques.

I created most of the pine branches with the "sgraffito" technique of scratching through the top layer of pine to retrieve the yellow / green of the first layer. The tree branches where created by painting the negative space around them rather than the positive space. 

The diagonals were a hugh deal to me and this piece has tons of them...hence the title of the piece. All of the pine needles create beautiful overlapping diagonals and that is probably why they are so visually appealing. Imagine icing a cake with about three different colors and covering up the previous color. That's what my palette knife paintings are like. I absolutely love the texture created by so much paint, but I will probably end up contrasting thinner layers with these thicker applications.

And that goes back to the point I have been making about the importance of creating a lot of work. It helps you to discover where your heart or your passion is taking you. For instance, one of my favorite pieces I've done to date, is the posting from December 3rd...."Look and Compare". I now know from all of the work I've done to date, that I like a lot of broken color. But I might not have figured that out if I had not created an oil painting every day for almost two months now. 

So you can see how daily creations can speed up your progress tremendously and give you such fabulous "feedback" on where and what you need to do next. It's really quite exciting! And there you have it...just a few more things to think about. 

Please contact me personally to inquire about this piece.