Scherzo Diptych

Firstly, I would like to welcome to this blog an artist who I have only just met but whose work I think is of the highest quality and I greatly admire: Mayaka Nakamura. Welcome Mayako.

Following the uncertainty which overcame me in my final piece from yesterday (I thought it was good but didn't know how to proceed) I laid that aside and started again, this time with the intention of following it through to a fuller, richer completion by building layer upon layer to create a painting of greater depth than I have ever achieved before. Each of the following Stages were completed on consecutive days.

I set up fresh boards on my studio floor and with renewed intention set off in time to the music:

Scherzo Stage #1. Acrylics on primed hardboard, 61x240cm.

Excited by this, but determined to build up further layers of meaning, next day I worked over the whole to "knock back" the white and try to bring some feeling of a Midsummer Night into the piece:

Scherzo Stage #2. Acrylics on primed hardboard, 61x240cm.

With this dull 'backdrop' I felt it necessary to bring some playfulness back into the Scherzo:

Scherzo Stage #3. Acrylics on primed hardboard, 61x240cm.

The playfulness I was seeking is certainly there, but it was the words of Leonhard Emmerling in his (Taschen) book on Pollock, when he was speaking about "Convergence: Number 10, 1952" that Jackson had used "...a range of colors that verges on the vulgar", and "...exudes a sort of delirium whose violence goes hand in hand with recklessness and lack of concentration". That decided me to work over the whole piece again - can't have any vulgarity here ye'know!:

Scherzo Stage #4. Acrylics on primed hardboard, 61x240cm.
With a large household paint brush and some emulsion paint I forcefully laid down a coat of white paint suggestive of ground mist and deepened the upper and lower portions.

I kept telling myself that what was important was the process regardless of what transpired - if it came from my subconscious then that was good. But that doesn't mean anything when you waken in the middle of the night in a blind panic! So much work and it was all lost by my own impetuous hand. How am I going to pluck victory from the jaws of disaster?

I have absolutely no idea.

Or do I?