So, the "Silks up against grass" and the "Untitled: Figure/ground" paintings (see posts from the last few days) are unrecognizable. I have painted white over them, and over a third 18 x 24" wooden base that I had not yet touched, and started a new problem. The paintings felt too tight, and they were beginning with a theoretical problem (figure/ground, alternating which recedes and which comes forward) instead of my usual idea of "place." The Yale Center for British Art fixed a label next to a painting that quoted Thomas Gainsborough (whose portrait, "Mary Little," I talked about yesterday) as having lamented: "I'm sick of Portraits and wish to ... walk off to some Sweet Village where I can paint Landskips & enjoy the fag end of Life in quietness & ease." And, you know, there is nothing like seeing a group of magnificent works like the ones Mellon collected to make me think "I can do better."
So I am looking here for "quietness & ease." I painted out the other work, but left a few signs of the earlier two paintings underneath the white. Then I painted myself a problem. This morning, Long Island Sound was so blue that it was positively Mediterranean. So, for the Sound, a triptych's beginning, 18 x 72", in paint:
