The Bargain Hunt

I have always been a huge fan of Peter Paul Rubens. I not only admire his draughtsmanship and his tangible form, but I have always admired his abstract approach to color and composition.

I love the purples and greens in his flesh tones. Particularly, I love how he positioned such intense colors as vermillion in armpits and other areas you would not think they should be.

Although I am a much different painter than Rubens, I am very inspired by his work.  In homage to the great Master, I began to work on this composition about 4 years ago.

I remember when I started; I thought it was going to be my masterpiece. Ha... got me again. It just went stagnant and I had to put it down.

I do that every once in a while. If a painting begins to die on me, but I believe it has the potential, I will put it down until I am motivated to work on it again. Thus the four years.

Here are some examples of the paintings development.

I chose, for my homage, Rubens' "Loin Hunt". I wanted to use the composition, but would change the setting. I needed to experience the basic colour scheme and I chose to do this in watercolour. This is my copy. It is 11"X14"

On a 24" X 36" canvas, I transposed what Rubens had composed, only with my characters. I put them in a supermarket fighting over ground beef. Perhaps it is the 4th of July! This is the point where it started to die. It lost the life it had and I got very frustrated. So, I put it down after about nine months of work.

Over the next three years I would pick it up and look for a while, but had no motivation to work on it.

In the Fall of 2006, I decided to put a few things down and bring some life into the painting. I came to the conclusion the painting was too dark. I needed to bring up the contrast. So, as you can see, I have begun to do so.

WIP Main