'City of Glass 29 - (Babylon)' 100x75cms
TUES I've had a change of mind- 'Babylon' is the title of the painting.
MON I have been looking for hours at this piece- I think it is resolved. Denise is not sure but Ollie says it's his favourite.
Any more additions/complications will detract from the strength of the bricks running through the image of Manhattan. I've simplified the yellows and Central Park and put in the rivers of New York, adding a curious drawn, linear element to the painting. Now I have, like the novel*, a mix of the ancient and the present day. Manhattan sits, like Babylon, between two rivers, the bricks/canvases and image within reminiscent of the friezes of the Ishtar Gate. The shape of the canvas relates to the ziggurat-shape of the Tower of Babel, which is, of course, made of bricks. The only dilemma is the title: 'Babylon' or 'Tigris and Euphrates'.
The usual horrors when I took it out of the studio into natural light. The yellows are crude and the surface too knobbly and complicated. The bricks/canvases must be more prominent - I'll gouge out the paint in the cracks. Am liking how the Manhattan shape site in the shape of the piece, the pinks are doing something and colours and paint in the Lower East Side. It's not enough- back we go.
Day 2I had to go to work today- so just a couple of hours in the studio. Colour is starting to happen and bricks/canvases more prominent. Manhattan image emerging. The larger bricks will be broken down into smaller bricks with the proportions of a New York city block. Manhattan will be covered with a brick pattern instead of blocks- made of bricks like the Tower of Babel. I think the scale is going to be 1 brick = 6 blocks, hence the new title. The painting takes on the idea of the enormous scale of the new Babel, where every inhabitant of North America will have their own room...... Think again of the words: 1 brick is the size of 6 city blocks... My daughter Faye likes the colours.
Day 1
* 'The New York Trilogy' by Paul Auster.