Serendipity

 Sometimes you start out doing one thing that turns into another. I started out to explore a background for Flight of the Cranes, as some of you suggested. I did that using a process that I have used before. You start with what Cezanne called "a terrible and wonderful thing;" a blank canvas. In this case just a 9x12 sheet from a drawing pad. Then you take a black marker and let it swirl over the sheet awhile until you satisfied. Then you fill in a few of the spaces of the swirl, again until you get an idea of whether or not you might use the idea.

I had forgotten about the meditative space to which the exercise could lead. So what started as just a quick "one off" turned into a nice few hours with calming lines and colors that I apparently needed after an enjoyable but exhausting fortnight in Italy. Here is the result:

So I decided to go with some version of Serendipity as a background for Cranes. I'm immersed in that now - which has taken me back to the words of Jock Gault, my sculpting mentor in Raleigh some 40 years ago. Jock was a purist. When we began to attempt a portrait bust he insisted we sculpt the skull first, "How are you going to know where the muscles that shape the face go without the skull?!"

Anyhow, he also taught me that in any creative process you go through stages of loving and hating that which you are creating. The idea is to stop when you are in a "loving it" phase. As Rembrandt is said to have said, "A picture is finished when the artist says it is finished."

I'll let you know when Cranes 2.0 is finished.