Back to the Still Life

I finally got to get back to my painting since the holidays are over and my sons are back to school. I feel like I have been holding my breath for a month and was nearly drowning by yesterday but now I can exhale. I am still excited about pattern, line and shape. I wanted this last still life to look like the objects were lost in a sea of pattern. I am anxious to try a human figure immersed in natural pattern this way. I have worked with this idea before but this will be a new approach. My graduate advisor was always saying that to the modernists the surrounding space was as important as the subject. For some reason, I interpreted that in my work as the space going through the subject and breaking it apart. But now when I look at some of Picasso's work around the time of The Girl in the Mirror, I finally get what she meant. Picasso outlines each section of negative space just as he does the subject shapes. They are all just as brightly colored and patterned. This makes for beautiful full compositions too. This painting is more Klimt inspired than Picasso. I will focus more on the negative spaces in the next painting.