"Rocks in Creekbed"

36" x 36" acrylic abstract on canvas

Artist: Dale Wolf

 I started with a color theme for this abstract. The fairly large 36" x 36"painting was for the main wall of a room with a gray & blue decorating scheme. It helps to imagine where a painting will hang.

But when I do abstracts, I always need a story in my head about what the painting is all about. I am not good at just splashing color on a canvas. I  started with shapes of blue on the canvas. But no story yet. I was just fiddling around building up layers of blue and gray paint.

Eventually the shapes were the stones and pebbles in the walkway in my back yard. I a corner I added the impression of water flowing over the stones. And there it was--serendipity. Rocks in a creek bed.

Once I had this story in mind, the rest of the painting emerged. Hints of the brown bottom of the creek and reflected ripples over the bed gave the rocks a reason to exist on the canvas.

One of the fascinating things about abstracts is that every viewer sees something a bit different. While I set in mind that they were looking at rocks in a creek, some of my friends saw two pair of kissing fish, a sleeping puppy, a ghost, a nude woman, a mouse with a tail. It's kind of like the "Where's Waldo?" game.

 

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