SAT 14 NOV
A good couple of days in the studio - BOOK 18 may be done. A sweep with a fresh blue through the heavy central dark cobalt in (2), now slightly overlapping the yellow, has brought back the openness and flow of the space in (1). Blue and yellow, the surprising palette of the novel - getting the proportion right the key to the painting. Love the strangeness of the yellow drawing/image, which hits the sweet-spot of working for the painting and referencing the novel. The yellow square is a gem too. I stumbled across the title on a re-read (p:100) - perfect.
I'd been wanting to use this palette in a painting for a while, after seeing Titian's blue/gold skies in the staggering 'Love, Desire, Death' exhibition at the National Gallery.
A sequence of events: re-watching a film (from a novel) that influenced my work in the 80's, inspired a journey. Later, I remembered a novel that featured the same location, with a motif of blue and yellow, a novel that I'd rejected as a source for the '20 Books=20 Paintings' series a few months ago, failing to find a hook...
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