New Work: Water, water Everywhere...

Water Water Everywhere
9" x 12" Acrylic on wc paper

Of the three aspects of color that I try and concentrate on (value, hue and saturation), I seem to have the least amount of trouble detecting discrepancies with saturation. Colors that have intense chromas really stand out particularly if the rest of the colors are muted to begin with.

For this piece, I decided to work more with muted colors to project a calmer idea of things. Originally, for the blue rectangle, I envisioned a more "marine blue" type of hue. I had that in there too to begin with and then changed it. With the new color, I saw right away that not only was the saturation level off, but the temperature of the color also didn't fit with everything else. Having a red-orange color for the rectangle also threw everything out of balance, shape-wise (to my eye), and so things were "off." Painting for me anyway is a lot of editing both at the outset and continuing on through the process.

The title for the piece comes from Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner.  I read this in high school but don't remember a thing about it. (Education is wasted on the young???) I include the link not only for the poem itself but for the history behind it. Quite fascinating. 

While the title for the piece is drawn from the poem mentioned above, the concept came from one of my many trips over the Altamont Pass. There is a canal system serving the San Joaquin Valley and on  my trips I pass by one of the canals. Water and its allocation as a resource fascinates me. Not only because I live here and depend on water but because owning a natural resource and deciding how it is allocated interests me. How can people "own" resources that everyone, rich or poor, need? Who decides? And California, which is nearly a state divided, has a particularly thorny dilemma as we deliver water from Northern Ca to Southern CA. It's a hard question.

OK, halfway through. Thanks for reading and commenting.
Libby