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Red Peak
oil on canvas
36" x 36" 2012 private collection The profile of Broken Knife is a perpetual after image in my mind because I see it so clearly from my studio - and also every clear day at the gallery. But it also became my peak of choice because last summer my son, Jake, who was 12 at the time, brought me a small lupine blossom from a meadow he climbed to very near the top. In this year of its making, this painting went through spastic evolutions of darkness and light like a mother's heart. It started on a red ground but slowly it became a very dark seascape with just a glimmer of light reflected in the water. It lost its verve. I couldn't figure it out. I let it alone. One day in summer I returned to it, just drawing over the top and letting the paint run and wiping through to the dark layers, and finding a luminous mirror-image. Jake came into the studio and studied it right then. "Woah, mom! When did finish that?" Now. |