The Bandoneon Player Revisited

My remake of old paintings continues. An early painting of a Bandoneon player, circa 2006, was in storage since it was part of an exhibition that same year. It had a nice frame and the canvas was sound so I decided to update it with fresh colors and a new composition. Like the painting of a dancing couple which turned in to a single woman doing a mathematics equation on a decorative background, The Bandoneon player became something richly decorative - with just a portion of the bandoneon player preserved.

I first sanded down the painting and let it sit for a while before deciding on edits. I settled on erasing everything but the face of the musician and his upper torso. I placed an oval stencil over his figure and painted out everything else with a thin coat of white paint.

At the time, my native yellow irises were in bloom so I harvested these to add to the composition. This only made sense by placing them in a vase underneath the oval. This vase of yellow iris was soon joined by a large teapot - painted from one in my collection. I altered the shape of the vessel to make it more ovoid, in keeping with the oval shape above it.

Finally, I transformed the portrait in to a depiction of a mosaic, painting a series of small tesselated strokes in various hues. A new painting again from an old work that was doing nothing more than taking up space.