Palette Shift

Les Parisiennes , 16 x 12 inches, oil on linen

This painting is a sequel to my earlier piece, February Morning at the Louvre . In creating paintings for my fall show, I had decided to start by doing several pieces without any regards to having an overall theme, except that they'd all be cityscapes. That was enough of a parameter for me; any more restrictions from the get go would have thrown me into a rut right away. So I did a bunch of paintings, trying to be faithful to my whim at every turn, and as expected, I now have several pieces that all look different. I might even say that they look like they were done by different artists. That's not good. Not for a big show, anyway. I had a friend whose opinion I trust and value look at them, and he disagreed with me. He said that they still had common threads running through them, stylistically speaking, and we got into this big discussion about it.

Long story short, my strategy was to have a handful of paintings first, and make a series out of each. And by working on multiple paintings at the same time, I would start to narrow the stylistic jumps as I became more in tune with what I wanted to say with this show. Furthermore, I am working back into the first bunch - the "prototypes" - with intentions of making them a more cohesive group.

One of the ways I'm doing this, is by limiting my palette. I'm after a different moodiness with my cityscapes than with my landscapes. A more urbane, gray, heavy feeling that's timeless. And I don't mean to be lofty and say that my paintings are timeless in the sense the great masters' works are timeless. I mean in a sense that some black and white photographs feel timeless as opposed to brightly colored snapshots that capture a "moment in time". In other words, unlike plein air paintings that attempt to capture fleeting light in all its glory, my cityscapes are not about natural light and its effects on color. And I want to make that unambiguous by shifting my palette to a more muted (like my paintings aren't muted enough already!), tonalist set up.

To that end, I took out Ultramarine and Cobalt off my palette, and replaced them with Ivory Black and Prussian Blue. Prussian is pretty intense, but it's a green blue, so I can't make intense purples even if I wanted to. And in my book, saturated violets are a huge part of the natural light equation. If I'm stepping away from that, I want to make sure I'm not tempted by violets.

Also, I'm adding Yellow Ochre. Not to replace my other yellows (Cad Lemon, and a mix of Cad Lemon + Transparent Brown) but in addition to them. Actually, the dull Yellow Ochre becomes my primary yellow and the brighter yellows are used only when I absolutely need them. Usually to punch up a green.

So my primaries, with this set up is; Yellow Ochre is my yellow; Transparent Brown is my red, and Ivory Black is my blue. Very limited. To this, I add my more saturated back-ups, the two yellows I described above, a Permanent Red and Alizarin for my saturated reds, and Prussian is my saturated blue. Oh, and white. It's not quite as muted as, say, a Velasquez palette because I'm using Transparent Brown (Transparent Earth Red, Transparent Oxide Red... different brands call it different names) instead of siennas and umbers. But look at what Velasquez could achieve with those dead colors! It's all how you use them, right?

Anyway, I'm making progress toward my show (early November). And it feels pretty good.