I really fell in love with this painting. I can't believe I let Cameron take it away from me. One of those regrets, when you think you're making art to get rid of, and learn that you are making art because you need to.
I can't remember which grid got the red ground first or why I stopped red-gridding at all. This painting has the most delicious paint I've used. That is partly due to the brush strokes over the red ground. I was able to keep the paint fresh because I worked in Steve's verse, each grid square is its own small painting and you paint only what you can in the time allotted, of course finishing whichever square you find yourself in at the end of your time. His method allows you to dive into a painting, leave, and revisit with as much innocence and vitality as if it was your first approach.
Mom's face was clearly the most difficult, which reflects the difficulty I was having with her dying. In the end she wore the death mask. Johnny had been gone long enough to be slipping his off and Theo only wore the shock of her losses.
There is a power in this painting generated by the juxtaposition of the lively paint against the solemn atmosphere carried in the figures.
