Consider the possibilities

 

What a start to the new year!  -- a special delivery from friends L and B.  They brought even more vintage bricks than I'd asked for from their house renewal project, which involved dismantling an old chimney.  Pure gold!!  And no doubt as heavy.  L and I simply cheered and applauded while B modestly showed his prowess, carrying all 14 bricks in a sturdy box.  When I shot this photo yesterday, everything was frozen in place and I couldn't even reposition them for a closeup of their new-to-me trademark:  "MAINLAND."  Oh, it's going to be a verrrrry good year!

 

Of course I've been thinking about where my paintings might take me, and I continue to brood on developing more depth, more dimensionality, more facility.  In an email holiday message, along came another "blank slate," as it were – in the photograph of an old friend's beautiful grown-up daughter.  Because I haven't sought permission and, in any case, always refrain from posting identifiable people pictures, I'll share it here in authentic blank slate mode:

 

 

With this, I decided to experiment with some favoured artists' start-up procedures.  I've admired contemporary American artist Lea Colie Wight for years and last year bought her book, even though oil painting is quite different in many respects from acrylics.

 

 

Still, her start-up method was potentially useful, I thought.

 

And so I began "Daughter" with a Wight-style loose lay-in.

 

Eventually I reached the About-As-Good-As-It-Will-Get stage:

 

 

At this point, there was only one thing to do.  Well, actually three things:- Paint it over, turn it upside-down, and begin again.

 

 

This time, I chose again one of my heroes.  You've met him before – contemporary UK artist Hashim Akib.

 

His start-up method is quite different, more linear…

 

 

…and rather resembles that of my enduring hero, Mary Beth McKenzie.  So here's my second beginning for "Daughter":

 

 

This progressed to something of a not-bad finale (particularly after I'd decided to stow the glasses):

 

I can't say that this greatly resembles the real daughter but getting a close likeness hadn't been my goal – rather, I wanted to get back in touch with painting faces which still endlessly fascinate me.

 

I needed some grounding, too, in a chaotic week of being without my laptop (and all its related systems) and meanwhile worrying about extreme low temperatures and potentially frozen water pipes.  What to do?  Keep at it and aim for a couple more Daughter-ish images in the manner of one artist or another.  Paint over.  Turn sideways.  Begin again.

 

This time, I tried to emulate Alex Katz  – still going strong at age 95, with a blockbuster exhibit under way right now at New York's Guggenheim Museum.  Here's Katz's "Black and Brown Blouse":

 

I positioned Daughter in slight profile, aiming for those Katz cheekbones – but her lovely features were just too gently rounded to make it as a Katz.

 

Meanwhile, another friend sent me this link to a recent CBS special asking, "Have you ever heard of this artist Modigliani?"  Why yes, indeed.  While I was confident he'd never painted a rounded face, I looked for a prototype with shortish brown hair, and he came through on that count.  Like Alex Katz, he apparently painted his wife again and again.

 

And here's my very slimmed down "Daughter" spin-off:

 

One thing is for sure.  If these two images found themselves shoulder to shoulder at an art exhibit, they'd have no quarrel about which artist knew what he was doing.  They both do – magnificently, in so many perfect structural details that I couldn't begin to capture in small scale.

 

So where is all this going?  Places we've never been before, I hope.  In that vein, I can't resist sharing the amaryllis buds as they've emerged through all the recent cold dark days -- and my favourite saying for this season, from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke:--

 

"Come let us welcome the new year,

Full of things that never have been."