The Final Gate, Sri Lanka, 54

The Finished Painting I usually have a pretty clear idea of a finished painting before it's even begun. But I knew I'd have to rely on a lot of spontaneous intuition with this one.
 
"The Final Gate" will soon be for sale.

THE FINAL GATE, 8x10" oil painting by puci

Visual Inspiration

This street view in Jaffa, Northern Province is so loaded with visual potential that I had a hard time deciding which elements to ignore. The "guards at the gate" were eventually omitted. The woman was, for sure, going to be the focal point of the painting. When I experimented with "flipping" her, something interesting happened. Lots of fragmented shadows appeared & I suddenly had a ghost of this woman's double. The idea of a transformation from life-to-death occurred, esp. when I noticed the gate in the distance.

Google Street View, Jaffa/Northern Province, Sri Lanka

The Destination

I'm traveling with The Virtual Paintout group again, and this month we're traveling to Sri Lanka for some virtual painting via Google Street Views. To me, Sri Lanka is one of those mysterious places were the spirit-world roams relatively freely with the physical.  Here's a direct link to the street view I settled on to paint: https://goo.gl/maps/dzHRRzyQsKn

Google Maps, Philippines