To Crop or Not?

I sometimes cheat by just tacking canvas to a large board. This way I can stretch and prime the ground of paintings but I don't have to nail my self down to a particular size. It then doesn't matter if the image strays off into its own tangent.

The two small Power House paintings happened this way. They were perched onto the cut off of one such "free scale" canvas. There was about two foot of primed, stretched canvas just hanging out at the edge and so I scribbled these paintings that had occurred to me one October evening.

When I went on to make the Power House a bigger painting, I wasn't totally sure about how it would sit on a much bigger scale. I thought I wanted to close in on the big sky. Perhaps cut out some of the clutter and let the great, cold, sky loom lonely with just the power pylon for company.

But now I am not so sure. I kind of liked the original's stilts. It sat regally atop a hill like a grand mansion or noble forgotten past. This cropped image has more simple and deliberate geometry. More contemporary compositional shapes but it also seems sadder; like the back story was lost.

Anyway, it is good to talk it out and to crop it digitally before I go tearing through the real canvas.

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