Untitled Still Life, oil on canvas, © 2008

Here's my second-ever painting with oils, done the second week of the class that started with the image in my last post. When I look at it, I can feel how hard I was trying to see well, to mix accurate colors, to pay attention to the shapes between objects. 

I think I remember using a palette knife for parts of it, like the odd hand-made ceramic vase that holds the foreground. But what I remember most about doing this painting was the absolute thrill of mixing the "juicy" (flowing but not liquid) oil paints into colors. Especially the different hues of those two oranges!

Partly there was the challenge of close observation of the real oranges as well as the paint on my palette. More than that was the pure pleasure of playing with colors in paint--a blob of this, a dab of that, mix and watch what happens. 

The pleasure of mixing and playing with colors still thrills me, three and a half years later. Perhaps it sounds rather dramatic or silly to admit this, but I remember that in the midst of mixing those orange hues, I felt a profound sense of contentment and exhilaration. 

"I could do this for the rest of my life," I thought. And maybe I will.