The Doors and The Doors of Perception

 ”The Doors” and “The Doors of Perception.” Okay, that’s a title from Aldous Huxley, well known and it just kind of irresistible to me that title “The Doors of Perception: Deep Thoughts from the Throne.” Doors Open, you know, and it’s looking across the hallway to a closet, a big closet actually huge closet.

Considering such a small old apartment. I repainted this numerous times, and again, I exaggerated this glow. It was really uncomfortable sitting down that low, but I just had to do the piece. It’s a lot easier for me to work standing, but this is done for a seated elevation. The doorknobs were interesting to me.

The plate on top of a glass is something that I do repeatedly. I like these compotes and various similar with a plate on top. It’s hard to explain why I like it, but I do. Mainly this piece is about the glow and so it’s the other painting called “The Doors,” you know, a little cultural reference.

When I painted it, you know, you’re look in one room looking through the doorway to another room. The room in the distance when I painted it was equally lit and it took me the longest time to figure out why this painting wasn’t very interesting to me. And so it occurred to me just to darken that whole distance.

And I did. It became a lot more interesting to me. One of my favorite things about this painting is the glossy paint on those doors, and it picks up so much interesting reflection. It makes me want to have the doors painted in my current apartment with shiny paint. So it would do that, and then I would paint them with that instead of the flat white.

The flat white on the walls, it contrasts really beautifully. With the shiny paint on the doors, so it’s kind of prosaic in the distance. There’s jug of mineral spirits that I paint with and some various accessories for painting, and then that little figure is an ivory piece from China and it’s actual elephant ivory, which is illegal for good reasons. That’s what we painted there and that distance in that arch, there’s a chandelier that caught the light just right. It bounced out to be a pretty good painting.

The reason I painted this odd rectangle is I ordered from my framer in 11″ by 14″ and he sent me a 6″ by 14″ ’cause I wouldn’t have thought to paint that rectangle.

The frame sat around for quite a while and thought, what the heck am I gonna do with these frames? I mean, he would’ve taken them back but it’s really the reason I painted this dimension of rectangle is ’cause I had the frame and I never would’ve composed it that way, but I’m glad I did.