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  • Writer's pictureChris

When does a Trial ..Become a Tribulation?

When I first took up painting as a hobby - I was excited by some of the great photos I had taken on recent travels...and very anxious to get home to see what I could create from them. A rainy night in Dubrovnik - was the inspiration for this painting. It was one of the very first I had done and I remember being so amazed that I had created anything...not knowing and really not caring if it was good or bad...just kind of astonished that I had actually done something creative. It certainly was not in my wheel house - I was a numbers gal!


This first version - far left - hung in a spare bedroom for the past 3 years. I never really gave it much thought until someone who's a pretty wonderful art critique saw it and told me that it had potential to be more than what it was. That was all the motivation I needed.. and down from the wall it came. Unshackled by its frame...it has spent the past week in my art room.. with me layering glazes and transforming it into something that is quite different from the original.


Yes the structure of the buildings are the same but the whole feel of the painting changed. What was intended to be a simple Plaza Rain scene - has now taken on for me...a whole new narrative. I went in with gusto and made the figures and umbrellas more prominent - rather than just a wisp of air. Then deciding that it was too bright - I tamed it down again with more glazing.


Now I feel like I have overdone it....is it finished? ..is it not finished? ....who knows! I keep adding more "stuff" to it and what I originally thought was a pretty coloured rain scene - has now turned into a dark - almost sinister - foreboding scene. "Plaza Rain" circa 2018 has now become "The Meeting" circa 2020. I can't get out of my mind that these people are hustling clandestine towards that open door at the end....


So....what's your take? Do you prefer the under worked but brightly coloured ghostly Plaza Rain....the darker but still somewhat bright umbrella clan....or the dulled down version of the secretive mob shuffling down the street?


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