Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
Stop before you make mud and ruin it.
At first I thought this was done. Then I wanted to shorten the tree to make room for the tree to reach for sky making more impact. So I kept working. Once I made one change I saw more to be done. I may never recover the spontaneous flowing movement. But I continued because I wanted the low relief of the thicker paint to read. as a tree. The sweeping branch was not a path to the far distance but a branch I wanted to sweep towards the viewer. The branch needed to be thicker than the sky behind it. I felt the movement was too tumultuous. It needed the stability of a horizon line.
I have achieved a horizon line. The impasto texture reads better. The curling branch has as much impasto as the sky behind it. So I signed it but I felt the signature is premature.
The wisdom here, contrary to the don't overwork a painting myth, is to bravely continue to develop your notions. The last linear mark was fresh, straight from a yellow ochre tube swirled onto the right corner to balance the sweeping lower branch on the left side. In this case the last gestural line is not a decoration added to the tree but an essential part of the mood and life movement focused on my feel for a struggling tree with limbs stretching to the sky.
