Pilgrimage

My latest painting started from a couple of unrelated watercolor sketches:



Half way through the background I found myself thinking I had seen this painting before...maybe I was imitating Klee?


Well, lots of calligraphers and artists use all caps, and maybe they are all influenced by Klee, but I went to the library and looked at all the Klee I could find.


I didn't see anything I was obviously copying but I thought the painting was kind of boring at this point. Adding blue made it worse so I scraped the whole thing down:


I'm not sure what I think of the finished painting, but it was nice to get away from trying to literally illustrate something. It's been a compulsion for me that I think stifles my work a bit.