I paint people who do not know they are being watched. I paint the ten seconds before they notice you are there. What I chase is the second a body becomes pure motion—the instant a gesture has left stillness but not yet arrived anywhere. This piece is that instant stretched as far as it goes. A castanet player between claps. Her arms up, the wood still apart, the sound not born yet.
The shadow should not be green
The wall behind her is ochre and rust. Her dress is a hot coral print. There is no green anywhere in the room except the ficus by the window, eight feet to her left. But her shadow on that wall is green—acid, singing, impossible green.
I sat with it for two days before I understood. The afternoon light in Nice does strange things when it bounces off leaves and passes through fabric. It does not care about local colour. It makes up its own mind. Ruby called the palette vivid and confident, which is kind, but what it really is is literal. I painted the green because the green was there.
The knife went in last, white and yellow slashes across her forearms where the tendons pull. That is where the motion lives. Not in the castanets, in the wrists.
Linen holds the colour differently when you paint it thin
This is oil on linen, and I keep the paint thin enough that the weave shows through in places—her shoulder, the wall, the fold of her skirt. It makes the surface breathe. Fauve colour wants texture under it or it just sits there shouting.
The coral print on her dress took longer than her face. Patterned fabric always does. I paint it as carefully as I paint the person because the fabric is part of who she is. A woman who wears that dress to play castanets in a café is not the same woman in black.
Valentina wrote about Mediterranean light and grace, and I will take the compliment, but what I was actually doing was waiting for the hour when the ficus threw green onto that wall. There is a good hour in every café. You sit through the bad ones.
For someone who wants motion without noise
This piece is for a hallway, a kitchen, or anywhere you pass through quickly and want a reason to stop. It wants decent light—morning or late afternoon, nothing dim. The colour will not work in a shadowed corner.
Not for a quiet, minimal room. This is a loud painting. If your walls are white and you want them to stay calm, skip this one.
See Clap Suspended Impossible →
Gallery-wrapped canvas, in 3 sizes — 12×16, 18×24, 24×32 in. Ships free within the continental US.
