riotheclown

	Worn without flash
	Remastered
	close up

This painting was originally called "Copenhagen" because there is a large rendering of the little mermaid under it. I feel her being there, hidden, is important somehow. I 've never been there and all I know are photos of the sculpture in the harbour. Apparently it is hard to take photos of it because the surrounding area is so ugly with junk and industrial stuff.

The major change I made was the pink rectangle in the bottom off center. What I learned here was that if the eye doesn't move around the canvas it will demand a nestled place to rest and this pink section bleed off the canvas and therefore did not supply the viewer with a resting spot. The remastered use of the white "bandage" makes negative space of the colours around it, and doesn't stand out so much that the story is over as soon as you look a the piece. I now show it upside down. People in our culture read from left to right, even when looking at paintings. Upside down the complexity is at the begining and the calmer sections lead you around in a clockwise fashion to come back to the bandage.

I have also added purple that bleeds through the other blocks and warmed up some of them with a peach glaze. I suppose it might help to add that when I started trying to learn how to paint abstract I was taking an anti-depressant for the first time in my life. The upside of it was I found I was re-introduced to colour. I felt I was being completely inappropriate with my sense of humour (I realized that was laughing too loud and also tending to be less than sympathetic in general) but I also felt actual joy again looking at colour, an experience I had lost since childhood. My now no longer therapist and I often discussed the relationships between creativity, depression and joy, not coming to any conclusion except to say they are closely related in the brain.

Oh, just want to add, I have had offers to sell this and my daughter wants it too but for now I will keep it. I like how I feel when I look at it. It feels like a piece of music. I also like that the little mermaid is under it, safe.