This piece has a long history, and I thought you all might like to see how the work evolved from a pencil drawing on canvas to an oil painting to the tesserae piece that is currently at the Chesapeake Framing Company in Kensington MD.
The piece originated as a pencil drawing … a concept drawing as part of my old SUN AND MOON collection. Here the old man in the moon appears as a face in the crowd of planets and orbs that dance about the universe.
At this stage I am washing in various colors to create the base line for developing the piece. I am using very thin washes that pick up the gray tones from the pencil drawing.
At this point the work is getting a little out of hand, and I start to work on the stronger contrast that I prefer to use. Mr Moon is still front and center, but the little landscapes that have appeared are more interesting and fight for dominance with the equally large moon image.
Here the moon begins to fade away and the landscapes occupy more visual space.
An here Mr Moon has disappeared altogether as a face and is now just another planet amidst the journey into space. Instead a black hole has appeared to give weight to the lower part of the canvas.
After living with the image for a while, I realized that it really was about the little landscapes that perch on the edge of space and started to develop the work as a study of two worlds that float past each other.
After few months I revisited the work and decided to create a tesserae piece from the old canvas. The process involves layering pieces of old painted canvas on top of the base painting to create a collage effect.
The work was now becoming very interesting with the addition of all the textures and was much more visually compelling with the simplified story being told. However it still felt a bit unbalanced, so I modified the lower structure and added some new color to the hills on the right to make them visually retreat and create a stronger silhouette.
And here is the final state. And … voila … Mr moon is now dominating the landscape. But instead of being all in your face, here the moonlight is sprinkled over the landscape like pixie dust. Hence the name, PIXIE MOON.
