The title came to mind while I was painting. I envisioned North Truro on lower Cape Cod, wandered to Mykonos, followed by thoughts of Matisse’s Morocco paintings which led me to recall Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, soon I was hearing Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue…
Emilia Dubicki ‘White Curtains @ the Blue Motel’ 2013. 50″ x 44″. Oil on canvas.
© Emilia Dubicki. Image courtesy of the artist.
I usually begin a painting with one or two colors in mind combined with some sort of mental picture of a general layout of structure/form/scale and proceed from this starting point. I paint abstract landscapes/cityscapes so I’m usually visualizing a specific place and then this place often turns into another place or composite of several destinations as memories rewind and fast forward. Where I was headed with the work is not necessarily where I end up. One vision blurs, retreats, drips and gives way to another. Shadows and light at different times of day, the atmosphere of a location, the essence of a place that hangs on in the mind and spirit — all of this goes into a painting.
The title came to mind while I was painting. I envisioned North Truro on lower Cape Cod, wandered to Mykonos, followed by thoughts of Matisse’s Morocco paintings which led me to recall Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, soon I was hearing Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue…
White Curtains @ the Blue Motel began with titanium white to convey bright light, then grey to tone it down with the infinity and airiness of blues. The title came to mind while I was painting. I envisioned North Truro on lower Cape Cod, wandered to Mykonos, followed by thoughts of Matisse’s Morocco paintings which led me to recall Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, soon I was hearing Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue and on and on the thoughts led one into another and there I was in my studio, conjuring up this ideal, moody, imagined place, The Blue Motel, with curtains flapping in the wind off the water. This is how a painting happens.
Emilia Dubicki‘s upcoming show, “REW/FF,” opens at Able Fine Art NY on 30 October.
(Editor’s Note: the show has been extended thru 12/3.)
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