Painful Progress and Slight Panic

It has been bitterly cold all week; the house is more drafty than usual due to a window that was moved in the kitchen and requiring some insulation foam to be sprayed around it again; I've made do with bubble wrap stuffed in the gaps for now!  There are drafts coming in from the front entrance and the back porch too; I was really not expecting to be troubled by icy blasts at this time of the year.  I am seriously considering making some old fashioned draft excluders to lay across the bottom of the doors.  How much longer can this go on?

Pete's just checked on his phone and apparently it is not going to get above 1 degree for the next 5 days.  I am praying that the snow holds off because I have to finish the large painting that I only started last Monday, and we are hanging the show on Tuesday!

I managed 2 hours out at the studio today, with my breath surrounding me in clouds despite the heater being on full blast.  I worked slowly on the painting; I think it might actually be nearly finished.  It has gone from a very bright pink mid week, to a rather beautiful soft painting of pastel colours; the lozenge shapes, that represent the "departed ones", are a soft yellow against the background of duck egg and pink hues showing tally marks behind.  there are other tally marks on the top layer that I've painted in the same yellow, and some that are very similar hues to the blue already extant in the painting and a soft green, which actually almost fluoresces against the other colours.  So although it is quite a "pretty" painting (and I don't usually do pretty), I am enjoying the actual beauty of the colour and the surfaces revealed and concealed.  The theme of this painting is "new beginnings/Spring", so it is appropriate, I think.  Looking at it alongside the completed "endings/Winter", which is mainly strong blue-grey overlaid with graphite, lilac greys and softest of shell pink in places, it works quite well both tonally and in terms of colour.  Phew!

And now I have just realised that I only have tomorrow to finish this painting!  I thought in my head, that I had until Thursday.  Don't ask me why; tell you I cannot. . .   

So my birthday tomorrow will be spent finishing off the Spring painting and. with Pete's help, removing History Painting from the wall and rolling it onto the cardboard tube ready to transport to the gallery.  Monday will be spent wrapping the finished large stretched paintings!

All the pictures show early stages of the painting discussed.  I am glad to say, it looks nothing like this now!  I like working in layers and stages, allowing traces of previous layers to show through in varying degrees; sometimes a previous layer may be completely obliterated for the sake of the overall painting, but I am sure that if the layer had not been there in the first place, the painting would develop differently.