BYE BYE, FISH COLLISION!

Another fabulous milestone achieved and another great learning experience gained… this evening I shipped off my first sold work via post to Washington State!

“fish collision” was created in September, 2019 just one week prior to “fall leaves”, my first commissioned piece.  In fact, I bought these two equally sized canvases at the same time.  Must have been some goooood creative juices flowin’ back then! =)

I started this work with the anticipation of pulling out Gravitron for a reprisal.  If you saw my post on Gravitron 3.0 you may have noticed “fish collision” among other siblings in the Gravitron family.  The pic below is the only one I captured of “fish collision” before it was finished…

You can see my inspiration on the easel watching over the work as I prepared the background.  My goal was to create two areas of intense color explosion on top of a blended background that I spread out with my knife.

I REALLY liked the way the dark, heavy body blue came out at this stage!  It’s times like this during a creation that I sometime ponder taking a different direction.  As with most of my work, I rarely have a composition in mind when I get started.  I usually select colors and the techniques I want to try, and then some semblance of arrangement.  But I really enjoy the process of letting the imagery come out of the canvas as I work… much like Michelangelo would chisel away the excess marble to reveal the sculpture that has always been inside.  Nevertheless, I persisted with my original vision and loaded up my brush with bold, bright colors to strike the canvas, primarily in the two areas of deep blue.

Like “conspiracy theory” I used a few different brushes to achieve variety in the layers.  Here is a close up of some of the details…

The white “fish” on the right in the pic above was the inspiration for this piece’s title…. and with all the excitement and crisscrossing of colors nearby, the name “fish collision” was born.  It’s as if one of a school is leaping from the melee of a feeding frenzy occurring just below the surface.  Yes, the surface… as I contemplated this portrayal I realized the painting needed just a bit more before it was complete.  I decided to give some boundary between the observer and the chaos, creating further abstraction to the imagery just below.  For this, I pulled out my large squeegee and loaded it up with a mid-tone blue from the base coat.  With these streaks across the full surface, the observer is now looking down into the depths, or perhaps into the side of a large aquarium.  What do you see?

So, I love talking about painting and sharing my experiences with friends and family.  Upon one such recent occasion with a work mate I shared my website url and a couple days later he showed a lot of interest in “fish collision”, asking about shipping.  I’d researched this in the past, but advised him that I’d never had the opportunity to send one on it’s way before… until now!  This past weekend I went shopping and brought home some bubble-wrap, some poly carbonate sheeting, and some shrink wrap and went to it.  I also created my first “certificate of authenticity” which you can see among the supplies in the pics below.

Really excited to hit this new milestone in my journey and I hope it is the first of many more to come!  Thank you, Chris, for your support!  I can’t wait to come visit you and see “fish collision” hanging in your home!