Mid race one - step I... taking a breather with a no brainer!

My plan is to do 10 paintings in this "100 meter dash" series. Before graduating to five 36 X 36 stretched canvases currently in storage, I decided to take a rest and complete the first five of the series with this rather simple subject using another piece of unstretched canvas. I will probably mount these five paintings on foam boards with temporary display frames for future exhibitions ...

The painting above is perhaps a good opportunity to use interesting colors and abstract patterns. It's also an opportunity to streamline my painting process by avoiding counterproductive steps while retaining the surface quality I am after in this series.

An interesting observation: lately, I have been emphasizing textures in my work using heavier bodied paint to create more interesting surfaces. Ironically, I find that my latest paintings are no more powerful than some of the earlier ones done in one third the time using pure transparent pigments, some grayed colors, and black and white. With these earlier works, textures were created separately with acrylic gel before applying paint. A few months ago, I had a chance to coach my wife in the use of transparent acrylic washes over canvases precoated with modeling paste to obtain impressive textures. Results were amazing. In the completion of this series, I have an opportunity, going back to stretched canvas, to experiment with even heavier textures... without using a ton of paint...