SAT 4 JULY
A celebration of purple (and its yellow complimentary). A tilting, rocking harbour tethered to... something. A point of tension, a holding, controlling line, preventing a falling harbour...
Another point of tension with the almost touching violet and yellow discs: will they, won't they, repelling like two positive magnets. This pairing of colours is acute: a three colour yellow and deep violet made from Ultramarine and Magenta.
Simplification, revealing the essential. The left of the harbour drawn by a new purple, the four piers a powerful central cluster, each with their individuality and difference.
I had to look again at the painting this way again - landscape - as a ship/boat/windsock, a more whimsical painting! I had a great chat about the 2 versions with my son, Ollie, who perceptively pointed out that the line that draws the left side of the harbour is a strength in the version above and a weakness as a 'boat' below. We were both fascinated by the tension between the two discs, the potential energy, the discussion leading to protons and electrons and nuclear physics. Thank-you for enlightening me Ollie!
The drawback as an 'image'- boat- is that the scale is fixed whereas as a vertical harbour the scale is indeterminate and unwordly, thus more evasive and interesting. A curiosity though: once you see it this way, you see the version above in a different light, another layer of interest. Harbour or boat, from the side or from above? All good fun - delicious ambiguities.
'Boat'
Beginnings: an idea about the Ship Inn ' Ship Inn a Ship'! (below) Too specific too soon, but the whites made a great base for majestic transparent violets, the ship becoming my harbour. Chaos (left above) but with the three harbour basins established. Simpler and more ordered on the right, purple expanding, yellow shrinking.
