Coming closer, getting deeper?

I told you that my word for the year is "deepen". Starting Monday evening my third year of Education for Ministry will be beginning and I will deepen my understanding of church history. I am sure that it will be both interesting and at times just a little boring, as history usually is, but I am excited about beginning. The professional student part of me and the spiritual part are in concert here.

I am also working on deepening my art, but first I had to finish a few pieces that I had begun earlier. So here they are.

The pour on the left has become the painting below. 

Dean said that it reminds him of Viet Nam. It certainly has a little hut and some jungle-type plants. 

 I like the sense of light in this one. It is obviously a clearing and not a new place. The wall has fallen in and the jungle is beginning to take over. I suppose that it could benefit from some more plants, but I am not sure that I want to be that literal. So many decisions and not enough experience to make them all. I will be having a session with the teacher whose classes Vicki and I have been attending and get her advice. There is a narrow line between blindly following even the best teacher's advice and doing your own thing. Sandy is a wonderful teacher but I am trying to find my own voice, as I have said.

This pour has become an underwater something or other. 

When I looked at it I saw a fish and then I saw another and then gradually found all sort of sea life.  In the photo they are fairly obvious, but in the painting they are a little more subtle. This was really a lot of fun. That big yellow one must be a grouper, I understand that they are quite large.

I think that the yellow guy needs some seaweeds growing up between the viewer and the fish. It is interesting how I just saw that as I posted the photograph.

Neither of these is the sort of abstract I would like to paint, but they are steps in that direction. Tonight I watched some YouTube videos by Isabelle Zacher-Finnet and saw what I would really like to do. Her canvases are huge (at least in my eyes; they are probably 4' by 6'. I should work out the measurements which she gives in cm.) She uses a brush that must be 4". I will be attempting, on a smaller scale, something that is a cross between what she is doing and what I have been doing. I am nervous and thrilled by the idea.

XOXOXO
Caroline