This is Cain and Abel #3. I had to look it up myself, because I was not 100% certain, but it all kind of checks out, um, now that I see that, I can realize that in this group, there must have been, I would say, probably three Cain and Abels. I mean, the group is called Raising Cain, and so it’s only appropriate that this subject matter show up more than once.
Let’s see, I don’t know why Abel’s there wearing a toga, I suppose, I guess, it’s because his mom ate the apple, right? That’s why you are clothed (I don’t know why a toga though, but what else, I guess). Uh, Cain is inexplicably unclothed, but, you know, I guess, um, that’s what was going on.
It’s a nice painting. I like this painting a lot. Working horizontally is one of those things that I guess I used to do fairly often. I’ve gotten so inclined in recent years to tend to work on the square if, um… If not, and if not square, then vertically. But I like this. I like what’s going on. It’s really a pretty nice painting. I’m looking at it, trying to figure out what it’s on, and I really think that what these Cain and Abel paintings were painted on were the remnants of the 1994 paintings that had been damaged by being poorly stored. And by having the oil medium being too oily, as opposed to, you know, turpentine or something, and so they didn’t dry very quickly, and they stuck together. But by the time I was painting on these, the oil was pretty dry, and it makes her an interesting surface, because these are acrylic over oil, which is a dangerous sort of way to play it, but I don’t think they’ve particularly cracked or anything, and I wouldn’t care, particularly if they did. But I’ve got to dig these out at some point, and see how they are. They’re rolled up somewhere now.
But this is a nice drawing (drawing with paint, you know). I was pretty well into it, I think, by the time I did these. In another blog post, I mentioned that a lot of times, I have painted groups of paintings, sort of simultaneously. And, um, and that way, they’re all sort of more, um, alike in the sense that the methods used are very similar. But with this group, the Raising Cain series, my goal was to paint one a day, and I did exactly that. And some days, the painting would come together right away, and I’d be done, take the rest of the day off. Other days, I’d work on that thing all day long, and it was in Cincinnati, and it was in the summer, and it was hot. And I remember just the sweat dripping off me some days, and I just couldn’t get it to work, and then I’d go over and over it. But this one looks like it came together really nicely, although I could be wrong about that. I have no recollection. But I think that it ended up really good. So, that’s my thought.