A Thousand Words

Well, this is beyond annoying.

My plan this week was to show you an oil painting I completed this week. It’s for my exhibit, with  ceramic artist Sharon Ohmberger, at The Burkholder Project opening on July 3^rd.

(Insert image of fabulous picture here)

However, my camera seems to have eaten my photograph.

For unexplainable reasons I cannot retrieve the image from my camera, feed it to my computer and upload it into the World Wide Web for all to see.  It’s there, I promise, somewhere in the wiring or circuitry. Hiding behind an electron or something.

(Image of me wild-eyed,  shaking camera)

And what’s really frustrating is that I was hoping to slide by on just that photograph. I was planning on enticing you with a simple image. Skip the words. A clever way to take the week off.

(Insert image of me with my feet up)

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Let’s just see, shall we?

Imagine a 16 x 20 format.  A line of distant trees on the far side of a river, painted in cool, dull greens about a third of the way from the top. Moving through the green are marks of dull lavender to give interest and subtlety. Where it meets a river, few slashes of dull yellow paint to indicate a rough bank. 

(Insert close-up of fabulous marks on fabulous painting.)

On the left at about midpoint are three gangly trees on a spit of land. They remind me of teenage boys, all skinny and elbow-y and a week overdue for a haircut.

(Insert another close-up...)

On the right, across an inlet, stand 7 of their friends, their feet hidden in dashes of rich green paint. The trunks of the trees are dull purples and greens, sunlit with short strokes of pinky-orange.

(...and another.)

Tucked into the dark green at the base of the trees are patches of more intense orangey- pink patches. Up close they are globs of paint. From across the room they become warm rocks and sand.

(Too many?)

A clear sky in prussian blue mixed with ultramarine weaves in and out of the trees, a puff of clouds accenting the trunks on the left.

The same blues are seen in dashes of paint taking up the bottom third of the painting.  How to describe shallow running water tumbling over stones? This area is created from dashes of dark blues and greens mingling with brighter variations of the same hues. Heavy paint marks of orange and pink meant to be sunlit rocks erupting from the water’s surface interrupt the march of blue lines angling toward the middle of the painting.  From there they blend quietly into the smoother marks of the river flowing beyond the tree line.

(Really, this one requires a close-up, maybe two.)

So far I've shared only the big landmarks. I’ve used up just a third of my allotted thousand words.  It would take that many and more to describe the nuances of color and brush stroke that I’ve yet to share.  Even twice that many words wouldn’t suffice.  There’s a reason I’m not a writer.

(This is where I would have posted a perfectly taken photo of this fabulous painting. You'd have been impressed.)

Allow me a few days to figure out the problem. When I do, I promise to share the image as planned. With as few words as possible.