Vivid

There's an old saying about how a blank page is a writer's worst enemy, and this wisdom holds true for artists, too. When I start a new painting, I like to establish its "key" immediately by blocking in the sky (the source of light) or by splashing color on the canvas to eliminate the stark white. I refer to the latter approach as an "underpainting" because it supports the final work from behind-the-scenes. 

With this new subject from 7th Avenue in midtown Manhattan, I was almost a little too enamored of the initial underpainting because it looked like a wonderful rainbow abstract to me.

But I plunged into this subject and found that the bold colors beneath enlivened it perfectly. If you look carefully in the detail images here, you'll see evidence of the "give and take" phenomenon where those initial colors peek through at selected intervals. This is what makes the underpainting a fun part of the process. As I paint, there's a dialogue between abstraction and representation.  

This painting is part of my ongoing "What's Your 20?" series celebrating my 20th anniversary of working as a professional artist.