Rescue Rockets!!

 

 "Rescue Rockets"

(15 x 21.5", Oils on Linen, Framed)   Price $1000.00   SOLD

This painting emerged from a previous idea I painted and became something bigger, literally and figuratively. My little 6x8" painting, 'Danger Zone' from the Christmas Small Works sale a few months ago stuck with me for a long time and I often wished that I had painted it bigger. Well, just after Christmas, I gave in and did so, only this time, I expanded the narrative as well as the size. With just the addition of a few flying rockets for drama, the story I was portraying became more than a tragedy waiting to happen, it became a rescue. All of the other elements and palette essentially remained the same. And so it proves that any idea can be tweaked to become something...more. Cue searching for and going through all my active sketchbooks, looking for the base sketch I used for the previous painting so I could draw up the canvas again. Only to realize an hour or so later that I NEVER doodled a thumbnail OR drew up a design drawing for the original painting. It was one of those on the fly creations that meant that I had drawn the elements directly on the canvas, and there was no sketch. Okay, the planet, the exploding rocks and the rockets could all be drawn straight on the new canvas without a problem, but the space station was tricky and a bit specific for that, so cue another deep dive into the paper flotsam around my studio easel, and then back to my computer trying to find the original thumbnail for yet another previous painting from last year, called 'Blue Moon Station'. I borrowed the original concept design from that low orbit station as the basis for 'Danger Zone' and then subsequently for the new painting. A few tweak on the station later, and then I painstakingly recreated the original concept on the canvas with the added rockets. And as I really don't like painting exact replicas of my previous works, I changed little details up a bit going forward. This is the closest I've come to actually copying one of my own paintings. 

This is the moment that I realized that I did NOT have a drawing, sketch or thumbnail to work from while I was painting, and if I stuffed it up, didn't have a reference to fix it. Hence, the bad hastily taken IPad photo.

I was still building the background and planet at this stage. Laying masses of paint, blending with big fluffy blending brushes, and then adding more paint. It was hard trying not to fully 'copy' what I'd done before. It felt like I was trying to paint with my elbows tied to my sides for some of it. In the end, I tried to shake it off and just have fun with the paint again. That's what my rocket doodles really are, when you come to think about it. It's just me having fun with the paint and the 'what if' principle.

This is the last progress picture I took before I had to finally get to finishing the painting. As you can see, I've started working on the space station. Its shape echoes the planet, and rivals the fiery demise with a light all of its own. It shines brighter than the planet, and offers hope. The space station also resembles a Christmas ornament, which I didn't realize, myself, until I saw my painting hanging at the Boskone Art Show in February. It blazed like a beacon that you could see from across the room. So, even if it is a redux of an existing painting of mine, I think I did good. One of my best, I think.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by. There's more to come, a few more bigger space epics and a few new paintings from 2018 and 2019 that I haven't posted yet. So, come on back for a visit, sometime....

Cheers,

Marianne