It showed up! After five different approaches, my final painting for the April show, made its complete appearance today, and wow did I work for it. A good tussling match ensued, scraping, gluing, mixing, slathering, tearing – new print blocks were cut and printed. Scraps from previous works were embedded.
And the Roman Forum was built, this time, in a couple months. Daily approaches were made but the seascape did not survive, nor did the night scene of Campo dei Fiori nor did the Roman wall and on and on I went shifting the surface and watching what was happening. Daily I questioned how was the composition evolving, what were the values doing, where colors working, what was happening under the surface and what did I want to save and sacrifice? I questioned mark-making techniques and were they working towards my direction successfully? And which ones were beautiful?
As the Romans constructed with bits of other and older buildings so I constructed with the remnants left from the making of the Roman Sketchbook. All the ponderings and workings from the sketchbook process were piled on my worktable. They became fodder.
Up went the Arch of Septimius Severus and the Temple of Saturn. Up went the Column of Phocas, glued on was the Arch of Titus with the opening into the arch being a finger print, albeit carefully placed, and blessedly the tiny Temple of Vesta in her roundness showed up, to mention a few of the participants.
Umbrella pines were scraped across the top of the Palatine while the Coliseum weighted down the left side of the painting. Bricks are imprinted everywhere as the cores of all the buildings are brick, and in many cases, is all that is left. Basalt paver stones wander their way across the entire piece simulating the Sacred Way that comes through the Arch of Titus and finds it’s way to the Capitol Hill, the Campidoglio.
The experience of standing on the Campidoglio and looking down in to the ancient Roman Forum in the late afternoon sun returns to me now.
