Search This Blog

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Climbing the Wall - Denver Monolith



Climbing the Wall, 36x24, oil on linen
Here is a painting that has caused me great angst. One that I thought would be fairly straightforward. A man, mostly in shadow climbing a wall, mostly in shadow, and then a wall of glass reflecting...how hard can this be? Part of the reflection from the glass wall is hitting the Monolith; and the man has sun hitting him from the side, that is how hard it is. I even went downtown again to see the wall; it looks so black and dead and falling apart in real life. It is so hard for me to want to paint it that color!

So it may be 'too' blue but it is what it is for now. I need to take a break from it. Trying to make a man-made sculpture look like real stones is quite the challenge. Plus, the wall curves. Lots of things involved. Challenges are what builds character, or so I hear.

I wanted to do this picture as part of my series on people experiencing art. This is just one of climbing on public art or sculpture that I have thus far completed. This was a first and only time I have ever seen anyone climbing the Denver Monolith which is in the plaza outside the main entrance to the Denver Art Museum. I did not hang around to see just how high he was able to go but here he is at the second story level.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

From the peanut gallery, this looks anything but straightforward to me. So it will be interesting to see how you decide to meet all the challenges and what you want to emphasize.

Maybe you shouldn't try to be too faithful to the real life model. Even then it will be complicated, if in other ways, since changing colors, heightening or lowering the amount of reflected light, etc. -- any of those things -- will change the picture in a fundamental way. JF

victoriasart said...

Thank you Jim for your thought provoking comment. I had thought I had worked through some of these issues to get where I am, but maybe that is why I put it in the closet to rest awhile and come back with fresh eyes later. Always good to hear what others see.