I began this painting intending it to be a collaborative piece with a friend. I started by creating a background with swirl shapes and then incorporated line work that added movement to the swirls. After wards, I intended to pass the piece to a friend who would give it some context, although the original idea fell through and I was left to finish the work on my own.
After several days of contemplating what to do with it or how it should evolve, I decided to go with my first idea of adding a face directly in the middle of the swirls. I could not get the image out of my head of an african woman with her afro being defined by the shapes. My initial impression was of the first Lauren Hill c.d. cover I had back in high school.
(beginning the face construction process working from photograph and the image I had in my mind – a result that looks quite scary)
Needless to say the painting has evolved into several paintings, as I have painted over this piece many times going through a rollercoaster ride of creation followed by destruction followed by creation again. For those who knew the painting in its beginning stages the original piece was this one (image on the right):
I then realized that my stretching of the canvas was hideous and had to be re-done, well one thing lead to another and before I knew it I was redoing the entire painting again!
After several attempts at reworking the face I began working on a layered background…
Still needing to work on the background swirl some more and adding the original line work back in the shapes, but I THINK its starting to get there, yet again…
DOTALart 