Spanish Rose

Since my grandmother passed away recently, my folks have been clearing out her old apartment and finding closets full of art supplies, pristine boxes of oil paints, bundles of brushes, and a number of rolls of canvas. There were also two stretched canvases. I decided to tackle one of them while I was visiting family for two weeks in Bombay. The painting ended up being a perfect example of the way I love to develop my compositions.

I really had a desire to fling red paint at the canvas. Since that wasn’t an option at my parents’ place, I decided to paint a splatter. While I was developing the splatter a female form started to take shape, which eventually ended up being a dancer. After playing some more, the curved form took shape as a wave. I was staring at a photo of the painting in my phone in a taxi late at night when I realized that the whole thing was starting to resemble a flower. Probably wouldn’t have made that connection without seeing it in miniature. Went at it the next morning and it worked, and now the whole painting suddenly became all about the flower.

I was mostly done, or so I thought, when my parents had an artist friend, Delna Dastur, over for tea. She thought it wasn’t done yet, the background needed to be something other than white. I was hesitant because it would be hard to lay color down so late in the game. She said “It’s always worth the risk,” and as soon as she left I used a rag dipped in watered-down paint to roughly dab a thin wash of indigo over the white. Took around 5 minutes and it was done.