Pentimento and Other Artists' Secrets

Pentimento??  This is what the dictionary says:  "the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over". I have always loved that notion, actually and metaphorically, since Lillian Hellman introduced me to it. It emerged for me in a couple of ways today.

 
It was a strange day, although not much stranger than multiple other recent days. It has been raining. That is not exactly normal May behavior for Chamisal. Here it is usually very dry, the hot sun already frying the early vegetables, which, this year, are yet to have their seeds even put into the ground.  Mid afternoon brought an hour of driving heavy snow. The mountains are white, tip to base, mid-winter's norm. If you live here, you know not to "expect" anything. Our mountains have many pentimento moments.

Today, after having several fairly nonproductive days, racing the last rays of the late-day sun, I decided I could feel very contented with myself by working on my "studio cleaning" process. So I headed on out there intent on mopping away the remaining winter doggie mud trails.

After a short perusal I decided it was just not so messy after all and maybe I could take some simple steps toward getting myself back to work on the important stuff of life: artwork! Was that an epiphany or simply a pentimento moment? I cut some watercolor papers to size for an intended project, and then took a look around. There are a few paintings that have been around for years that have passed their usefulness, but have been kept because they represent "new beginnings".  (See  my recently published book for the significance of that "new beginnings" term.)
http://donnajcaulton.blogspot.com/p/about-my-book.html).

"Lion dreams"

Painting "Protection"

Three paintings sneaked under the radar for this culling: "Lion Dreams", a very uncharacteristic work, " Protection"  a Peace image long past its painterly significance, and "Cosmic Egg", a piece I really like basically for what I learned about painting when I worked on it.

Cosmic Egg

I debated long and hard about giving them away, but really do not like the idea of having work that is not up to snuff out in the world. Instead I coated all three of these paintings with gesso. They will need a second coat, and will soon be new paintings, but for now they retain some of their origins, barely visible through the single layer of gesso.

MANY years ago I read Lillian Hellmen's book of short stories called "Pentimento". That was also the title of one of the stories. The aura of that story has floated around me for as many years. I love the idea that an artwork carries not only itself, but the stories of the artist who created it, as well as the images that lie beneath, long covered over but still part of its history...a sort of archeology.  Here are Lillian's words, "Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter "repented," changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again."

   That Lillian: you could not mine the depths of her!!