Pentimenti and My Painting Process

presence of absence, 30 x 30 inches, oil on canvas painting, Sharon Kingston

This abstract painting is ripe with with pentimenti–meaning the underlayers and marks that show through subsequent layers.  This effect is hard to photograph because it is not high contrast, yet ever so important to the experience of the painting and the sentiment I tried to evoke.  There is a richness of depth to take in, if you can get the viewer to stop skimming the surface for just one minute.  There is a sense of water and fluidity and just a suggestion of landscape.  And there is warmth.  None of these things will be gotten from a social site post or pin.  Like most art, it is a need to see in person kind of painting.

This painting is from my Presence of Absence series and newly completed this week.  I encourage you to read the poem to understand why having those revealing-by-concealing forms are so relevant.

To Lou Andreas-Salomé, Duino, late autumn, 1911

Memory is not enough… I do not recollect. What I am is alive in me because of you. I do not reinvent you at sadly cooled-off places you have left behind. Even your absence is filled with your warmth and is more real than your not-existing. Longing often meanders into vagueness. Why should I throw myself away when something in you may be touching me, very lightly, like moonlight on a window seat.

Rainer Rilke – Uncollected Poems

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