The Moon and Six Cents Painting

The parabola is the trajectory of rise and fall. Of a thrown baseball, a shot arrow, a launched missile, a developed civilization, an evolved species. Here you can trace the parabola from the white crow through the moon, the asteroid, the black crow, the penny and the nickel, to the thumb of the dude taking his last walk up Dawson Road, absent-mindedly flipping what may be his last two coins. You remember Somerset Maugham's novel, The Moon and Sixpence, inspired by Gauguin's heroic flight to the South Seas. Joseph Campbell called this kind of journey the left-hand path: "There is the right hand path that keeps you fixed in the proper path of your world. You live a dignified and, in a rich society, a richly developed life. On the other hand, you may flip out. You have a feeling of incongruity: 'This doesn't go with me.' And you move out. Out into a world of danger. This is known as the left hand path: you follow the way of your own bliss. And you are in a realm in which there are no rules, and since your bliss is not mine, you don't know where you are going. Here you live a life of danger, creativity, perhaps not a respected life, but certainly an interesting one." (From the first of Campbell's Mythos lectures, "Psyche and Symbol.") Maybe this guy flipping his coins on the road is on his left hand path, the path of the artist. He's broke and his world is about to end, but he has followed his bliss, and his trajectory was certainly an interesting one. (This is on heavy 30" x 23" watercolor paper mounted on 3/16" archival foamcore, 34" x 27", ready for framing.) CRISWELL'S WATERCOLORS When I returned to representational art in the late '70s, watercolor was my first love - probably because it was so different in technique from the abstract oils I had done back in Florida eight years earlier. I became a transparent watercolor purist, working from light to dark, no opaque paint, ever. I used masking fluid in all kinds devious ways to achieve intricate highlights I couldn't get by painting around them. I got over the purism eventually, and sumi dishes from Japan became my preferred watercolors. Some of the lighter colors are more translucent than transparent and can be almost opaque if dry-brushed, allowing me to use them on black paper a few times - something unheard of in the watercolor world! But mostly I use white paper for light, and I still use the masking fluid when necessary. I try to get the same high contrast, dramatic chiaroscuro effects in my watercolors as in my oil paintings.

Painting:Watercolor on Paper

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:27 W x 34 H x 0.3 D in

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