I painted this piece back in 2016, around the time I had started adding collage elements into my work. This piece was an attempt to not use every color ever made in one of my paintings. I had a tendency to over do it with using too many colors so I wanted to only use reds, pinks, black and grey. I didn’t really have any set idea on composition when I started this piece, I was just putting thin layers on the canvas. I was really into the drippy effect of the oil paint so obviously I included those as well.
As I start adding layers of paint I start thinking more about composition. I end up covering up a lot the drips and really a lot of the original layers. I wanted more darks throughout and at this point I was happy with the direction the piece was going but it felt too broken up and choppy, for lack of a better word.
I kept working at smoothing things out and making things more blended while also keeping some things separated and choppy. I also found a little excerpt from a poem by, I believe it was Lord Byron, which I felt fit some of the things I was personally feeling and decided to glue it into the painting and then paint over it so it’s sort of a hidden detail that you can really only see if you look at the piece in person.
