White House, May 2

The last of 3 little images made yesterday...completed from a motif noticed while doing the garage sale rounds in the morning. This tiny white spec of a house seemed so fresh in the midst of the new greens.....still the pinks in the background because foliage is just starting for deciduous trees.....also shot outside against my favourite flower, the tulip, which sadly seems to last only a few days now because cool spring days can turn summer hot in the snap of a finger.

Every picture requires tension of some sort....dark and light, bright and greyed colors, large and small, very loose and more controlled......all of these are noticeable here and consciously included in the painting process. As well, while every inch of the surface must always be considered, not all parts of the piece should be equally worked. Some areas are singled out for more development, some for less....and this also gives a desired tension. This aspect also seems to dovetail nicely with the way vision works. As we look at the world we choose to focus upon only certain things at any one time, but we remain aware of a great deal of secondary information in the form of peripheral vision. Some of the world seems very complex, busy and detailed....and other parts remain veils of generalized information...and it all fits seamlessly together. Not a new discovery at all and present in so many ways through art history. Just one example, the sfumato of High Renaissance and Baroque times allowed the artist to spotlight attention easily onto select subjects by allowing edges of objects to fade away unnoticeably into the simplified darkness of background. More and more I do notice that this contrast of the general to the specific is necessary and desirable in a picture, and can lead to some sense of realness at least akin to what is experienced in life.

4" x 4" acrylic collage painting on paper, external paper size 5" x 5", now listed on Etsy.