picture story: sublime limelight

"sublime limelight"
salt on watercolor

I did this painting about 3 years ago. Being a "non-day planner" type of girl, there was a period of time in which I made things and didn't bother to date them. It happens quite often. It's kind of funny, because in the context of Art History - if you ever take an Art History class - part of one of your exams will be to memorize the artist, title, and date of a painting. We're all very familiar with "circa," aren't we?

So, this painting is c. 2008.

This painting amuses me. It amuses me, because, technically, it's upside down... and yet it isn't. This painting is from what is quite possibly my second installment of salt on watercolor paintings. The first installment was literally a series of experiments that I did during one of those semesters of Aqueous Media back in college (so, the first installment is c. 2000).

Anyway, the second installment of salt on watercolor paintings came to be as the result of happenstance. My grandmother always buys me some sort of art supplies for Christmas, usually they're kind of cheap, but it's better than getting socks or a sweater (because while I have a ridiculous amount of socks, I do not wear sweaters). So, the paint was just there, and apparently I just happened to have a pad of watercolor paper, and I had just opened an etsy shop, and I was starry-eyed at the concept of selling my stuff and supposed that I should probably try to sell some "original" artwork instead of just prints.

Anyway, the salt on watercolor thing occurred to me as an idea. I mean, I wouldn't become too attached to them, and I could just sell them (ha! I have a a pile of favorites). So, I sat down at the paper cutter and proceeded. They started out as being studies in color like this. But by the time I had gone through the entire pad, they ended up looking more like what I think of as an implicit landscape. Arbitrarily — if it's green on the bottom 20% to 40% of the painting, then it's a landscape. So, that first installment was 50/50 between just being color studies and implicit landscapes. And the piece that I ended up titling "sublime limelight" was kind of a transition point between the color studies and the implicit landscapes.

When I named the paintings, this was one I had to move to the back of the pile, because I had to determine which end was the top - the green or the lavender. Because I had no recollection of which was which from when I painted it, as often there is a lag between the creation of the paintings and me getting around to naming them. It is entirely possible that I have it upside down. Which, again, amuses me.

If it was an implicit landscape, then, yeah, it's upside down. But, I don't think it is. Still, it makes me smile. That and there are technically 3 colors of paint in this painting that aren't so much three colors of paint. The green color might have been almost straight from the tube unaltered color, but the lavender is an amalgam purple color, which was probably derived from some actual purple paint, a bit of any red that happened to be on the palette, and a smidge of cerulean as well as a helping of good old titanium white. This was one of my first unadulterated flings with adding white to my pigments and making them more opaque. You have to look really closely to find the periwinkle color, which occurs primarily because I used salt scraped from other paintings on this one.

And, yes, it is right side up, even if someday 100 years from now some Art Historian tries to insist that it isn't.

Plus, the title is derived from "Limelight" by Rush, which is one of my favorite bands; even if the lyrics of the song really have nothing to do with the content of the painting. Hey, Geddy Lee was my first rockstar crush. Never mind the fact that he's older than both my parents...

Have a lovely week, and remember to find amusement in something.