Perry Brooks Nichols

Last night, I took my backpacker easel out to one of my favorite viewpoints in Exall Park. This spot used to be just a concrete square in the middle of the park ideal for practicing tai chi & yoga, once they added the bench & trash receptacle a decade ago I sought out other spots for meditation. Now, it's a great spot for setting up an easel, if it's unoccupied. I rushed out out of eagerness to test out the brush holders I ordered from Amazon, surprise surprise they even hold palette knives! I forgot my easel lamp due to the rush, but there's always a light at the basketball court was behind me. This painting was almost 1 & done in a single session. Using drawing oils has sped up my approach to composing an image. This was also my test of using gessobord cradled panels, my new favorite surface, with the easel - it was a learning experience; let's just say I'm glad it didn't land face-first & I'll be sticking to 3/4" depth for future excursions :)

Studio Update: After varnishing the sides of a cradled panel w/ Danish oil & allowing them to dry, I finally experienced what it's like to paint on It was so glorious blending in areas of Cerulean Blue & Burnt Sienna mixed w/ Ceramic White that I'm considering saying goodbye to canvas forever. The great benefit of oil paint is the long drying times = more time to fix things/change one's mind. I was unhappy w/ the way my last color study on canvas was coming along, my vision drifted to what Richter/Ernst might do. While wandering around in the hardware store earlier this week I saw the solution: the Square Notch Margin Trowel! Also, I put the finishing touches on my plein air painting from the Parks Concert last week w/ my favorite colors.

"The Power Of Three: Pt. Trois, The Flower Of Dreaming" - oil study on canvas. This color study evolves from an attempt to reimagine a lost Toltec mandala designed by representing the "dreaming attention." The violet triangle represents the dreaming body, the green circle divided into rays is the collective unconscious which is used to navigate the orange field of authority/control that the conscious mind attempts to exert on the mind's eye. The process started by drawing a triangle w/ an Ultramine pale pigment stick by , & filling it in w/ a OH Cobalt Violet/Burnt Umber mix. Then I tied a nylon string to a Chromium Green Oxide stick (a favorite neutral green) to create the circle. Next I started drawing in rays & surrounding field w/ a Cadmium Orange pigment stick. I painted in the green ray layer by mixing Verdaccio w/ Green Gold which yielded a very lush leaf-like shade. The orange field was emboldened by sacrificing the remnants of an old Cadmium Azo Orange Van Gogh tube. Like in dreaming, there is very little purity: one color bleeds into another just as daily worries often corrupt our dreams & perfect dimensions are bent & distorted. Also, the garage studios getting more organized, I just need to clean the old tools out of my grandfather's hand-built workbench.