No no no it's gotta go

Having had a few days off from staring at the same piece intensely for two weeks I realised I can't live with it. It's just too damn, well, obvious? cute? cliched? There's something or some things about it that really appeal to my glance although it's hard to say what they are. So it's not ready to be scrapped just yet, but something major needs to happen, and I'm not yet sure what that something is. Here's what's on my mind as a first thought, and no, I didn't go mad with a huge brush over the canvas, it's done digitally.

It returns my mind to the question that came up when I started this blog - If this piece originated as a sort of love song to the goddess, why is that simple idealistic hopefulness less satisfying than the complexities that always follow the honeymoon?

I know it's not just me. The definitive case in point is a piece I did last year, 3 Dreams, based on this figure. Believe it or not this girl was dancing at the time but not even she can say why her pose was so closed in on itself. As soon as I saw the pic it fascinated me and I knew there was a painting there. But when I finally got it done and out in the public gaze I was pretty sure it would be too dark, too scary for people. And indeed words like 'twisted', 'alone' or 'lost' were used by viewers to describe it.

But these were good things. It was a hugely popular piece, and not just to gothic young women out of The Adams Family. Middle aged middle class businesswomen were equally drawn to it, and not a few men.

So what's going on here?

It seems we humans are drawn to drama. The fact is that no compelling story is one of simple happiness, something so well known in Hollywood that empires are based on it. Storytelling is based on conflict. Every hero needs a villain. It's embedded in our reality system. We want the happy ending, but not before a whole lot of bad news goes down. Perhaps it has something to do with evolutionary processes, something for consciousness to push against while it whiles away eternity. I don't know. I wasn't there at the design stage as far as I recall so I just work with what's put in front of me.

But whatever.  I'm gonna put this one on was on the backplate to boil down and swap it out with what I put there when it got started - and just maybe finally finish a piece that is still not done after about 4 months - King of Streets. What needs attention is the bottom left, an area that got painted out when my previous cert for a solution turned out a dud.

Meanwhile bubbling up to the surface is another image that's been intriguing me for a while which even already has a title - Strange Pilot. This is the digital layout as a quick sketch - the trail of fossily things is likely to change before we go live. Interesting how that primal art thing is now cropping up everywhere.

Originally I'd seen it as the figure in dark over a light background as per my usual style, but it just sort of came up the other way round. I find it much harder to make a piece work coming out of darkness but this might just be a case where it gets easier. Sort of feels that way. Wish me luck