Rounding Up

This is a painting of my friend, John Nicely, mounted on my buckskin and rounding up a few strays in Knoxville, TN.  I wanted to keep this painting loose, edging toward abstraction.  I started with a scarlet under-painting, done in acrylic ink and then painted the image in gouache on top.  (Having an acrylic under-painting makes it easy to modify, move or even "remove" any of the gouache during the painting process which makes this process similar to painting in oil.)

I did not intend on leaving so much of the scarlet; it was supposed to be covered by the gouache and just peek through here and there.  But I liked it in this "half-done" stage and decided to stop.  I can claim I am following in the steps of many impressionists and colorists who chose to use color in new ways. 

I have also observed, with my own art and with art I have seen being created by other artists, that art is often at its most interesting and captivating in the stage right before the artist finishes it.  There is something about the "finishing" step that sometimes removes a little of the spontaneity and liveliness that makes the art really sing.  (Not always, but often enough it seems.) I tried to avoid that here.