I thought I would write a little about my painting Their Refinement of the Decline, as it is about to go on display in a show called “Hello Tomorrow: Bay Area Artists Envision the Future” at the David Brower Center in Berkeley.
My initial concept was to depict an enormous machine that has been constructed to clean up all the pollution and environmental mess we have released upon the earth. Unfortunately, when this machine is switched on, it belches smoke, leaks oil, and creates as much pollution as it tries to contain. It is an allegory of how, when we create problems in the world, we tend to chose short-sighted solutions which invariably create other problems.
The composition for my painting was inspired by a work done by the 16th C. artist Pieter Bruegel, depicting the Tower of Babel.(shown below)
I don’t always make preparatory studies prior to a new painting, but in this circumstance, I wanted to figure out my color palette and to get a rough approximation of my envisioned scene. It may look quite loose but this study contained enough detail to help guide my vision.
Next, I stretched a 4 by 5 foot canvas and began to block in my underpainting. I often like to start with a warm yellow tone for my initial layer as I find it adds a warm glow within my paintings. I then proceeded to add more layers of color to build up my composition.
The scene began to coalesce as I added successive layers of detail. Throughout the process, I sought to maintain a balance between painterly looseness and rendering objects like city buildings, smokestacks and scaffolding.
As it was, I could have easily kept working on this painting for years, adding more and more details. But eventually I opted to wrap things up so I could move on to the other painting projects. Overall this painting took me about three months to complete. And here is the result . . .
