This is the first painting on a new batch of water color paper from Italy.
It is cold pressed, but quite smooth. And the sizing is such that it lets the pigments sink into the paper, instead of keeping therm on the surface, as my previous paper did.
It surprised me, but when I saw this I decided to go along and have softer colors than the usual. After all, I can always strengthen some colors by painting a second layer.
When unexpected things happen to me while I paint, I tend to accept them as what had to happen. This is how life appears to me and it is my path of the moment.
Now I remember that I actually wanted to have a softer painting, after the harsh effects that one of my previous papers caused by its coarseness and the different sizing it had.
As in many others of my paintings there are hints of fields, trees, clouds and an animal. Here the animal has the body of a big bird but with four legs. I do not think when I paint. If a line suggests itself I make it. Then I add colors and let the suggestions of shapes and colors come to me spontaneously. I do not plan and I never know how the painting will end. I like the unexpected. If I knew how I wanted it to end, what would be the point of making it?
There were two spots that I strengthened after it was done. The place where the brown is almost red, and the darkest green on the tree. Then I knew that it was finished.
I wrote down what I saw. Soft, warm colored fields, something that walks, sun, and the leaning of everything towards the right, as in the handwriting of many people.
I wrote a few versions of crude poems, trying to make sense of what I see. Then shortened and shortened. I took out from the poem everything that was not essential. I was left with this:
We are going to the inner sun
Through our inner fields
That soften as we pass through them.
