new painting
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim91F8lDVvEse7LTDqfQzj-jUK2SPIG-r8zB6vhjkBpOX1sM9o5Q4T6HTfgrwYBTitMOgr4ZLJsabvFOwXt9paU2t8mJCgvhqR9Va68WWtZ7f6WYnC1B2Tnih7n7hdTBSUNCHzQA/s400/aerugo+email.jpg)
After an excellent week for painting I have been looking at everything that is done or nearly so, and seeing changes, similarities and directions. This painting,
Aerugo (42"x48" oil on panel) is quite similar to
Rust, finished a couple of weeks ago. I had actually meant for them to be a diptych, or to join them into one large painting, but this was not to be. They moved in different directions, in spite of color similarities.
Aerugo has a more tactile surface, texture formed by paint layers that have not been smoothed over to flat in the way I do with most of my work. I am enjoying the energy of this effect.
Rust has a quieter, more meditative feel than this one, but both have intense reds...and maybe meditative isn't the right word...how quiet can red actually be? I've been really enjoying heaping on this vibrant color in contrast to the bleak outdoors.
I also see that I'm moving away from the emphatically vertical compositions of the past year or two, such as recent paintings
Ghost and
Sanctuary. I still have several of my Vertical series in progress, but most of the other multiple panel works are closer to square. Why this is so, I can only guess that for now I have mined the possibilities of that format.