Market Scene

In a letter to his wife, Claude  Monet wrote "Anyone who thinks a painting is finished is arrogant."  Leonardo DaVinci is credited with the statement "No painting is ever finished just abandoned." It is not uncommon for me to take a painting off the wall years after I have finished it and rework it because of a new technique I have learned or a style I am embrassing. I need to listen to the voice in my head of my former teaher Rob Liberace telling me not to keep reworking old paintings but just to do it better or different next time. What I often tell my students is that when you look at a painting and say "Hmmm what else should I do? The answer is Nothing" It is finished. So , I am going to listen to myself and declare this painting Finished!

This is a large painting, 24 x 40, of the Medina Market in Accra, the capitol of Ghana. The amazing thing is that I didn't edit a thing. This is just one tiny little slice of one tiny section of a market that goes on and on for blocks and blocks. After you have been there many times you can find order to the chaos but the first time it is overwhelming. I only wish the people there understood why I wanted to take pictures and that I found them captivating and wanted to use these photos to give back to their community. Then we wouldn't have to take the photos so secretly.

For those art purists who say they never paint from photos, only from life. I say, painting from these photos is the only way to capture their real, natural, unposed life.