R13 Nuclear Picnic

R13 Nuclear Picnic
24 x 36" oil on panel
Private collection

Using the watercolour field sketch (R8) I did this summer, I worked up this idea. I had the idea for a ‘raven picnic’, and wanted to put in more blue and white dishes, carrying on the themes of R7, 'Nuclear Tablecloth'. I had a lot of fun with the colours, the green against the red/orange and the bright yellow.

Someone commented that it was impossible to look at the painting as a whole, that the two sides of the background refused to come together. That bothered me for a while, but then I began to enjoy the effect. It’s one of my favourite paintings of the series.

She watches the wing patterns closely, as they jump and fight, dancing around each other with their beaks open.

Sometimes she runs with them, in a single line through the grass, arms spread, with long fingers curled at the end, in the painting with green trees draped over the horizon and the red and white checked cloth on the grass. She has been waiting to have a picnic.

-Mary Weymark Goss (Journals)