Leroy's Art Blog

It hasn’t all been play and no work for me, here in Beijing.  I have done a little painting to keep in practice, and I expect to do more, although my hopes of painting with Hao Li haven’t taken shape just yet.  I’d brought along the sketches and photo I did of the gourmand sitting at the next table a couple of weeks ago at the National Portrait Museum in Washington.  Its been fun turning that into a small painting.

  

 But my real intent was to paint a scene typically and recognizably Chinese.  I thought I would paint a produce market for its luscious rich colors, but they are so crowded that there is no working space.  So I ended up in an indoor market, painting a butcher stall with great hunks of hanging meat.  It turned out to be quite a challenge, and raised interesting issues.  Those hanks of meat have personality, meaning, and they are not happy to be there all dismembered and nude, sliced and mutilated unceremoniously.  That needed to come out in the painting, and made it all a very challenging exercise.

Now, if it all works out as planned, tomorrow I will be painting again with Hao Li.  That should be totally delightful, with none of the  issues lying under the surface as they seem to with the raw meat.