Peak

Peak

"Peak" - mixed media on wood panel, 24" x 18".  Available here and at Artfinder.

​We recently spent an evening watching a time-lapse painting video by Ornulf Opdahl.  Which plummeted me into a quest to paint in the completely opposite style of Brian Rutenberg - fewer shapes, larger shapes, limited colors, heavy textures, abstracted monoliths.  I thought it would be easy.  Ha.  Let's just say there are seventy paintings underneath this painting.  A lot of  layers, each one a fail.  But here it rests and, at last, I am satisfied.

Self-awareness is like an onion.  There are multiple layers to it, and the more you peel them back, the more likely you're going to start crying at inappropriate times. - MARK MANSON, ​The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck
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I am so relieved that no one can peel back the layers of this painting. :)

The more time I spend in this revised life speed of "20 is Plenty" (going slower than I have to), the more "ahas" and epiphanies pop up and smack me in the forehead.  One of them is this: I really, REALLY like slow living. 

What is objectively true about your situation is not as important as how you come to see the situation, how you choose to measure it and value it.  Problems may be inevitable, but the meaning of each problem is not. - MARK MANSON

​So, as we lay in the grass in the sunshine here, contemplating cloud dragons, listening to crows and selectively choosing the meaning of our current problems, take a look at Ornulf in his element.   After which you, like me, may have studio-envy.