"What's a 'red letter day?'" my 6-year-old self asked my mother, who of course knew all the important things and could tell me. (Now, I wonder if children are even introduced to paper calendars with this helpful code.)
The colour red can symbolize so many different things that it's only fitting it should launch the "Spectral Figures" series that I introduced last time. For several years I had a practice of building my sketchbook with memory drawings from people sightings outside the neighbourhood. I'd always tried to note and then to later record an example of a face, a pose, a costume – not necessarily from one person. But then everyone started wearing black!
Too bad, but occasionally I'll still catch something – like this young woman's face.
I decided to dress her in red and omit the beret – which I used last time. To warm up, I made a quick painted study of that sweet face.
I'd saved a pose from an old newspaper and thought it might work – a woman sitting on a white cushion in a white-walled room with window.
Almost as soon as I finished that preliminary phase, I realized I wasn't giving myself enough room to do much with the face – and tuning up faces and figures is one of the goals of the Spectral series. After all, I was working on only 14 by 18 inches, and I'd need to scale the figure up to fit a larger head.
With a lot of back-and-forth (enlarging, diminishing, enlarging, diminishing), I arrived at a suitable size. I'd never intended to leave the background white but opted for pale tones of green, the colour complement of red.
I also considered using very dark green for the walls, with a deep grey-green storm cloud gathering in the window view. Dramatic, yes...but, but….
Better to quit while I'm ahead. Here's the final version of "Red at First Blush" – Spectral Series, copyright 2025.
Well…. Is this red? Yes. Is it interesting? Not particularly. This led me to go searching for what other artists who I like might have done with red prominent in their paintings of a figure. Here's a find! – Paula Rego's portrait of Germaine Greer.
I think I'll make this kind of comparison the final step in each of my paintings in this series. There will surely be interesting surprises – like the wonders of a huge creamy white flower eventually emerging from the red bud of Magnolia grandiflora, radiant even in today's Vancouver rain.
