How one develops

This is a new beginning. I want to show how just one of my paintings develop. What gets changed, colors, compostion, etc. This painting is being done from a mental collection of remembered images. I am an active cyclist, doing centuries, club rides and solo rides, so this image is that moment of shop talk and story swapping that happens before and after each ride. If you ride in a group it is necessarily social. I enjoy this aspect, but it can get dedious. After all, art making is a solo activity and most visual artists enjoy being alone.

I am trying to balance the colors at this point, find which gestures are going to help the composition, which direction the figures should be looking (which way their head face helps move the viewer's eye through the picture plane).






So now I have added the color and logos to the foreground cyclist, notice how the red band on the green jersey informs the green and brightens it. One of the tools I use is breaking the edge of the margins of the paintings, this increases the movement. The primary reason for not painting to the edge of the paper. That and my mentor in college, Jewett Campbell once said, "The first four lines of your painting are the four edges of the paper."





Now I am trying to find the ground color(s) and work some compliments into the jerseys, working warms and yellows against the intended blues and lavenders of the parking lot pavement. I felt that a fourth bicycle leaning against the car in the background would help hold the upper section and unite the two main characters; other than their hand gestures and their facial directions.


This is what I see happening, what is your take?

Lie Like a Dog

Here we go. What I want to do here is talk about where my paintings come from, what or if they mean anything, and what do you see that I don't or haven't. Just a small endeavor that like my art work is unmapped and unknown. I thought I should start with my most recently completed work.

To cover the basics, this piece is created with oilsticks on paper (Shiva Paint Sticks and Windsor Newton Oil Bars on D'Arches Tout En Cast rag paper) and measures 42"x52".

Like all of my works, the painting is created right on the surface, no preliminary drawings, color studies, no solvents and no pencil or charcoal sketching on the surface. As this site's titled implies, I am interested in color and motion. By working this way, from memory and immediately on the final surface, the colors are balanced against each other right on the surface, next to the colors of their final location and the compostions is quickly realized and then fine tuned as the painting grows. Even in this quiet scene, the motion is created by the color compostion the use of the animals and figure to pull the eye through the picture plan. I invite you to my web site www.greigleach.com. to see other works.

I use narrative imagery to compose the abstract formal elements of the work, and then weave that story back into the basis of the image, each informs the other. The story here is a simple one, a view of my wife (and barely visible) and I asleep in bed with two of our dogs in attendance. Edgar is asleep on/at our feet and Grommet can no longer make it up on top of our victorian bed (that's him in the lower left). We are sleeping under a painterly interpretation of one of my Grandmother's quilts.

I am curious what you think of the work and what questions I have raised on left un-answered in your mind.