Rowboat in Marsh, 18 x 24" Oil on Canvas
Painted by Brad Rickerby
This is a palette knife painting. I started this just immediately after finishing a blue and orange schemed cityscape (of Hong Kong harbor, I'll list it here one day). I wasn't really thinking about anything other than filling the canvas with multiple tones and shades of yellow so I could start work on a complimentary scheme of yellow and purple. The marks I made in the yellow were pure abstractions. I had no idea where I was going and didn't really want to think about it at the time. I threw on some white too. You can almost never hurt an abstract by throwing on white. I mixed the left over white with the purple I was going to start with and pulled the knife over the canvas. I stepped back to look at the painting and realized that a rowboat had appeared in what was clearly a marsh!
Was it magic or luck or was it my body and my hands and my instinct telling me what do to when I didn't really want to be thinking about the process? That is a question that will never be answered, but what is important here is knowing when to stop. I have seen more painters, myself included, ruin their works by continuing to paint when clearly to all, they should have stopped.
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