The secret gallery’s blog

Detail of Jellyfish2, work in progress, oil on canvas by Marianne Slevin 2010

“Flying fish” and” Coevolution”, both works in progress, oil on canvas, by Marianne Slevin 2010

This afternoon I put my finger on my painting to see if it was dry enough to start painting on again. “Dry enough”,So off I went! More layers, more detail, then erasing, merging, working slowly and thoughtfully then stop! Playfulness takes a turn when it all starts to get too serious a sort of painterly sense of humor! It is really hard for be to translate the feelings I get into words, I suppose that is why I paint them. It just would not make any sense in words;  A kind of push pull happens in my painting it is very invigorating but using so many bits of yourself at the same time is also quite exhausting, it feels like a kind of dance between reason and chaos, taking risks and sometimes appearing to move backwards in hope of taking a huge leap forwards! I think this painting is moving towards being a better painting though it looks less harmonious and together than it did yesterday, but I hope in a few more days, l will have surpassed what it was before, with some more layers of paint, but I think it is important to be brave and put down those marks that may look awkward now, like the top left corner, but knocked back, vaguely peering out from behind another layer or two of paint will work much better.  I usually prefer to work in a really concentrated way for shortish bursts then stop look, listen and today read National Geographic! I am reading all about Charles Darwin at the moment. It is amazing that nearly half of the USA prefer not to believe Darwin was right! I wonder how many people in Ireland believe he was right? The two paintings above are inspired by him; I love the idea of coevolution. Darwin saw the orchid and predicted that there would be a moth somewhere in Madagascar that he had not visited with an 11 inch nectar receptacle and years later then found it, it adapted to the flower and the flower adapted to the moth.