Acrobatic outcomes

I've been doing studio gymnastics for a long time now, and there's no way to predict when I'll land on my feet.  It was 2016 when I painted "Clowns Take a Tumble" and considered it then to be a kind of breakthrough.   I haven't painted over it yet, but not every attempt of mine has survived that long -- or even reached that stage.

Remember "Young Fil"? 

It seemed to start out so well, and then at a late stage, it became clear that too much was wrong with it.  Quite disappointed, I stowed it in a dark corner until just recently -- when the time was ripe to turn it upside down, paint it over, and start with something else.

I decided I'd work from a drawing I'd done several months ago at the life drawing studio.

I worked away and began to wonder if this particular canvas had a curse on it.  The placement of the shoulders wasn't right. The slope of the head was wrong.  And even as I made adjustments, I decided that as a drawing it had been one of my great successes -- but as a painting….it was boring.

Enough!  I reached the stage of what I dramatically call "The Point of Abandonment."  But as if on cue, almost that very day, my niece N sent me a fabulous photo of her (and my) friend H, who lives in Bellingham.  I knew I had to give him a try and started with a quick familiarization study on cardboard.

Then I took the troublesome canvas, painted over the model's head, turned it upside-down, and began to lay in H's portrait.  He's one of the kindest men I know and in his quiet way draws people to him.  Notably, he's also a fabric artist, and I decided to place an imitation dyed fabric behind his head.

It's taken some juggling, but two tumbles later, this canvas turned out to be magic for me.  Here's the final version of "Artist, Friend, People Magnet," (copyright 2019).  

This is truly the best painting I've ever done. (Not that I intend to give up my pursuit of surrealism).   And here's the real work of art -- a close-up of one of H's tie-dyed scarves that he and N gave me, a cherished essential in my summer wardrobe.