This piece began as another experimental mixed media. I had such success with “Breached” that I wanted to do it again! This initial under painting was done some time in 2015, I stared at it in this phase for probably a couple months. I finally decided it wasn’t going to work as well as Breached. (Although looking at it now, I probably could have made it work) I decided to have my dad cut the board in half, into a 6×12 instead of a 12×12. Below is what I had to work with after the cut was made. While I thought it was the right move and would make it easier for me to know what to do, it absolutely did not help.
It wasn’t until months later that I found out about using citrasolv on national geographic magazine pages to alter the paper. I experimented with a few pages which turned out pretty cool. The photo below is one of the pages that stuck out the most to me, the piercing eyes of the woman on the left were incredibly intriguing. I don’t recall exactly what urged me to put this image onto this piece but I did and then I sat with it for years.
I was experimenting so much at this point that I was trying to put everything and the kitchen sink into this piece and most of the pieces I was working on at the time. I thought that gold leaf was the answer to all my problems, it definitely wasn’t, but I didn’t know what the answer was. Between a couple of studio moves and an apartment move in 2017 this piece was lost amongst other abandoned paintings for the better part of 2017 and 2018.
It wasn’t until the end of 2018 that I realized I had so many half finished paintings laying around my studio and decided one of my resolutions would be to pick up these long lost paintings and attempt to finish them. To my surprise, this one really didn’t need too much before I was happy enough to call it finished. I added a little pink to the girls cheek and arm as she felt a little too flat before that. I also extended the white after looking at it with fresh eyes she looked like she was floating. By adding more white, it grounded her into the piece. I toned down a little bit of the collage elements on the left side of woman and then darkened up parts on top of her head so it didn’t look like she was being beamed up into an alien space ship. Those few adjustments were all this piece needed to feel complete. It also helped me make a slight dent in my resolution.