When my painting teacher in my first year class made my friend, Claire Redmon McConnell, redo her portrait of an apple it was because she said the representation was larger than life sized, and no one wanted to look at objects larger than life sized. At the time my teacher, Martha Armstrong, said this, I thought it was arbitrary crankiness. I now realize that, while clearly an overstatement, there is some hint of sense. I still can't explain it, but I find that, in general, and soup cans aside, outsized representations of things, people, tend to fall on the bad side of my irrational aesthetic score card.
All of which is to say that I finked out, and the 24 by 48 inch otter has shrunk to 5 by 8 inches. I still don't know what I am going to put on that big canvas.
It really is a leap to go from rather small to rather large. And, as my friend Nick Kilmer cautioned, not always necessary. But I have this big canvas that I've carried around for ten years, and I feel I ought to use it. I feel like a coward for not using it.
But maybe I won't paint a really large mouse on it.
