The grey early light this morning made one of my paintings finally work
I have a small interior study I've been fighting for weeks. A corner of my studio, the chair by the window, nothing grand. It never sat right. Every time I looked at it I knew the light was wrong but I couldn't say why.
This morning I woke before the alarm, went down in the half-dark, and there was that particular grey Lyonnais light, the flat diffuse one that comes off the river. And I saw it. The painting had been lit like an afternoon in my head, warm and golden, but the room itself only ever looks like this. Grey. Honest. I mixed a little ivory black into everything, cooled the whole thing down, and it just... clicked. Two hours, gone.
Funny that the answer was to make it less pretty. I think I'd been painting what I wanted the room to be instead of what it is. The chair looks more like the chair now than it ever did with all that fake sun on it.
It's still not the painting I thought I was making. It's better.
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This is a lovely thing you have shared, ji. In our painting also, the light decides everything. I have sat many mornings watching how the sun falls on the wall of my house in Madhubani, and it changes the colour of the whole day. One hour the fish I have drawn looks one way, next hour it is another thing entirely.
What you said about the grey light being the honest one, that is a very true observation. We often paint what we wish the light to be instead of what it is. But the painting only settles when we give the truth. I am glad your painting finally sat right for you. That morning will stay with the work now.
this is such a good point, "we paint what we wish the light to be instead of what it is." i do the exact same thing with glaze. i'll imagine a piece in that golden warm colour i want, fire it, and it comes out looking nothing like the day i was actually in when i made it. the kiln forces the truth on you either way.
there's something humbling about it though, isn't there. when you finally stop fighting and let the thing be what it actually is, that's when it works. glad you both know that feeling