Here's another older piece I found in my studio, that I've given a new life by cropping! This (originally 10x8) painting had languished in a gallery years ago because (I believe now) of an ambiguous front leg which was hugging the tree in the bottom part of the painting. I knew the leg might have looked a little big because, well, it's a big cat, and the camera had foreshortened the angle a bit and since the leg was closer... Well, combined with some oddness with how the shoulder joint was bent, it garnered some confused comments. So I pulled it out and it ended up in the stack of 'old' stuff after reusing the frame for something else.
But I always loved these eyes! And the back-light across the top of this fluff-ball, and the languorous pose. So today when a friend saw it in my studio stack of 'olds' and I was explaining to her the story of the odd leg, I said "I should just chop it off." ... Hey!
And so I did! It's a much a better painting now. It even improved the composition.. Just goes to show that sometimes amputation is what a painting needs.
(You can see the past life of this painting "Up the Tree Again" on this blog post from 2012.)
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