Half a Diptych

There’s a lot of artistic hogwash that goes on about inspiration and the Muuuuuse and generally it ends with either the backs of hands pressed to foreheads and swooning or a lot of dense grad-school verbage about the artist as transcendent observer. (For the record, I have never been a transcendent observer in my life. I did once get REALLY interested in the backs of my hands in 1995, but there were some other factors involved.)

I don’t know about muses. If anything, I know less about them now than I did when I was younger. In my experience, inspiration is less about having a Sudden Great Idea and more about getting the hell out of the way and not telling yourself that the eight-hundred-ninety-three ideas prior to that are stupid.

None of which particularly explains why, sometime Monday night, I decided that what the world really needed was a pair of very large cream-colored hares.

With bonus look at my studio!

It’s a diptych, or will be. Here’s the one on the right. The one on the left is still being cobbled together, since it’s 30 x 40 (and for me, that’s REALLY big) and I am having to print out a stencil in 12 x 18 chunks and tape it together to get the outline.

There is a certain…something…to a really BIG painting. Honestly, they’re an ungodly nuisance for the artist most of the time. You can’t scan them, you have to store them somewhere, and since most of the big ones are on canvas, they’re susceptible to things like cat claws and stray human feet. No one buys them because they are an enormous hassle to ship and who has an entire blank wall they’re not using? I sold the biggest piece I’ve ever done to a friend for fifty bucks just so it would LEAVE MY DAMN STUDIO ALREADY.

Still, there’s just…somehow when it’s really HUGE, it has a kind of visual majesty. It almost doesn’t matter what you paint, it’s impressive just by being THAT BIG. You take notice. You go “Dude. That’s a big thing there.” Which keeps you painting them occasionally, even knowing that it won’t sell and you will eventually put your foot through it on accident while trying to get to the pre-cut mats stacked behind it.

Kevin stared at it when I turned it around and said “There’s something a little…off. Kinda like the faun saint things.”

“You always say the nicest things,” I said, hugging him.

When they’re both done, I’ll post a shot together. In my head, it’s really impressive. In real life, we’ll wind up putting it in the upstairs hallway because that’s the only place with any bare space, and we’ll have to move some art around to accommodate and I really gotta clean out the big rack in my studio and see if there’s any stray room to be had there, if this mood doesn’t pass off quickly.

2 thoughts on “Half a Diptych

  1. Uzuri says:

    Now, see, this is exactly what I can see needing in my upstairs hallway. If I had an upstairs hallway. Which I don’t. But I can see having it there regardless.

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