A few years back, around the time I began this blog, I was painting honey jars. One of the motifs I used back then has stuck in my memory, and lately I felt the urge to paint it again using the same image, but approaching it in a slightly different way. So today I started a grisaille of a honey jar on a bright yellow plate in front of a cloth with a dark floral pattern.
How do I describe the thrill of repainting this idea? Something about the dark flowers, their typography on this cloth that covers the table, bending the pattern of the flowers, making them almost animate. The ways that lines appear by accident in the juxtaposition of elements. The curves of flower shapes or the facet reflections of the honey glass, the changes in tonality in the viscous honey itself, as light passes through its depths, the bright yellow plate like a sun, like the sun that warmed the bees that made the honey that glows before night flowers.
Below is the earlier version, that whet my appetite.
Aletha Kuschan's Weblog 