From Old to New

This is the last Fall Fearless and Fly challenge.  I have to say that it has been a worthwhile challenge as it has made me think about what I am doing with my art.  Some have really put me to the test, like this one has.  I had more or less decided to give it a miss as I was not getting anything, when it dawned on me that what I have been doing this past week is so the prompt. Only just made it too, lucky that NZ is a day ahead of everyone else!

Headline prompt:  Radical to Mundane and to Radical Again:  What once seemed new that now feels old and boring?  How can you see it as new again?  How do you "jump charge" creativity when you're feeling stuck?
Color:  black & neon’s - bold contrasts
Quote:  Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvellous.  Bill Moyers

This past week has seen a change in me.  Up till now, the past few years I have been painting people orientated work, with a few flower studies thrown in.  I used to paint landscapes particularly hills (I live in a valley and so they dominate the landscape.)  I stopped doing so because it seemed boring.

I had occasion to look at some old artwork that had been buried away in a trunk this week.  It was strange my feeling for the hills returned as when I was on my daily early morning walk I really looked at the eastern hills.  For a moment the sunrise lit up the hill in this neon orange.  It was luscious, like an apricot when it is so ripe and juicy.  I had to paint it.

The mundane had become marvelous!  I see those hills every day, I wonder how many wonderful colour combinations and plays of shadows and light I have missed because I was not really seeing.

It has made me think.  We need sometimes to look at where we were to see how far we have come.  Revisiting those things of the past we will see in a different light now because we are different people now.  My rendition of the hills today is so different than what I would have done in the past.  By looking at some very old work my creative juices have been kick started and I think that will show by the way I will use colour and the paint brush, a looser style is emerging.

Linking with

Fall, Fearless and Fly and Show and Tell Saturday at Artists in Blogland and
Mandarin Orange Monday