Still in Progress but well along it's way. This is the first time in two years - yes, I've been working on and off on the painting for two years! - that i'm happy with the backgound. Still a ways to go, but definitely PROGESS...

Place de la Concorde

This is the progress of a painting that I have been working on for well over two years. It's been a very slow progress but an important one. I usually don't struggle with imagery but with this I have. The original photograph was lent to me by Sarah Tingen (www.sarahtingen.com).

Place de la Concorde
24x30-inches (wxh)
Oil on Canvas

The statue itself is wonderful but I have changed the background at least 5 or 6 times. My latest addition is the lettering of the background. It's just a sketch, still needs painting and hopefully will be finished soon! Yes Sarah, I'm changing it again...

This is an inspiration from a poem by EE Cummings. It's a love poem that he wrote to one of his wives. I kept thinking about what this painting meant to me, and this painting is an honor to the human figure, to God's creation. A love for something.

O District
Lady of my unkempt adoration
if i have made
a fragile certain

song under the window of your soul
it is not like any songs
(the singers the other
they have been faithful

to many things and which
die
i have been sometimes true
to Nothing and which lives

they were fond of the handsome
moon never spoke ill of the
pretty stars and to
the serene the complicated

and the obvious
they were faithful
and which i despise,
frankly

admitting i have been true
only to the noise of worms.
in the eligible day
under the unaccountable sun)

District Lady
swiftly take
my fragile certain song
that we may watch together

how behind the doomed
exact smile of life's
placid obscure palable
carnival where to a normal

melody of probable violins dance
the square virtures and the oblong sins
perfectly
gesticulate the accurate

strenuous lips of incorruptible
Nothing under the ample
sun, under the insufficient
day under the noise of worms