Phalo Wind
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Phalo Wind
by Elise Tomlinson,  
Oil on Canvas 20"x 24"

This painting I finished in November of 2003. I had a show coming up in two months and no paintings finished. Hanging on the wall of my studio were 10 white, primed canvases, all of them the same size, all of them blank. I had been having a major creative block, and had spent months without painting. This was the first painting that I actually started, and finished within about 5 hours.

I had been taking photographs of moss and lichen in the wetlands outside the University of Alaska Southeast where I work. My original idea was to paint enlargements/abstractions of these photos, which I still find fascinating.

However, I couldn't seem to escape the figure, which I feel an almost compulsive need to include in every painting. So instead I incorporated the enlarged moss (in this case sphagnum moss) into the foreground.

In my opinion it's one of my most successful pieces from this series.

Updated: Apil 2nd, 2003
©2000-2003 Elise Tomlinson