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I visited Germany in the summer of 2016. My wife works with the Greater Richmond Children's Choir and they were touring the country. I decided at virtually the last minute to join them partway through the tour, and Lufthansa'd my way to Dresden in mid June. I had one day to myself before I would meet up with them.

I have read Slaughterhouse 5 and knew that Dresden had been decimated by Allied fire bombing during World War Two. But as I wandered around the city I foolishly thought to myself - "huh, this must be a part of the town that wasn't bombed and burned." Because the Dresden old city looks OLD - centuries old. I distribute my ignorance equally between jet lag and typical American obliviousness to the rest of the world. But some credit MUST go to the amazing artisans of Europe whose ability to recreate what I would have thought unrecreatable is beyond astounding.

The Frauenkirche was built between 1726 and 1743, replacing a predecessor which had existed since the 11th century. It stood several hundred feet high, cheerfully deflected every cannonball fired at it during the Seven Years War, and was living helled to smithereens with the rest of Dresden in February 1945 as Kurt Vonnegut Jr. lay sobbing in a fetal position in a basement slaughterhouse. When the fires ended there was little left of the church except for the statue of Martin Luther outside it's front door.

And this is how it stayed the entire time Germany was split in two. It wasn't until the 1990s that reconstruction began and it was 2006 before the church was restored. And, again, when you see it, and everything else around it, you would swear it is all hundreds upon hundreds of years old. Martin Luther remains outside the door to welcome one and all.

It is a magnificent structure; absolutely beautiful. I plan to one day paint it on a large scale, with appropriate attention paid to its architectural details and immense and stately beauty. This painting is a quick little study done for the fun of it. While not plein air, it was done using the plein air "timing" of get 'er done because the light's going to change soon.

I really like this one. Hope you do too.

As you might surmise, I do not like temperatures approaching triple digits with humidity approaching satanic extremes. Weather in which it is not even possible to stand perfectly still without sweating. Weather which makes one want to place Willis Carrier, the inventor of air conditioning, into the same scientific pantheon occupied by the likes of Galileo and Copernicus and Einstein. In the seat of honor. Let Ben Franklin go fly a kite.

But I live in Richmond and it is July and it is what it is and I in fact own several air conditioners so maybe I should just shut up.

Not to mention that Asiatic Lilies and Zinnias - delicate petals of flimsy flowerhood - take this awful weather and just flat out THRIVE; extolling me to stop being a baby and celebrate.

So, Yay! It's hot. It's SO hot. So (censored) HOT!

And it gives us Asiatic Lilies and Zinnias.

And that's a good thing.

One evening a few months ago we went out with some friends to celebrate a birthday (not mine). On the way to the restaurant, stopped at an intersection, we looked to the right at the Richmond city skyline to see an absolutely amazing vision of evening sunlight exploding over the tops of the clouds which had just moments ago had threatened to rain on us. I was riding shotgun and was able to power down the window and capture a single photo with my phone before the light turned. What I especially liked was that the source of the light seemed to be coming from just above the Madison building, where I work for the Virginia Department of Health (it's not the tall building - that one's the Monroe).

I knew that, one day, I'd paint it.

So I did, starting with a full sheet of watercolor paper. I had fun, but was inattentive and forgetful and foolishly tried to correct every mistake with more and more paint. This can work with oils, but is usually a recipe for creating a watercolor painting that looks like an overworked chalk drawing.

The first mistake - before the too much paint - was actually trying to capture the entire skyline that I had photographed. I was pleased that the tall Monroe building was off center and would make for good composition, utterly missing the reality that the light post bisects the image, one of the no-nos of all no-nos.

I hated the way it turned out. Hated it. Was spitting mad at myself. Ginger, a fellow artist, pointed out that if I removed the right third of the painting with scissors (one of the best advantages of watercolor over painting on canvas) then the bad composition would be gone and the painting would work much better, making the overworked effect much less noticeable. She was right, but I was still so mad at myself for making so many mistakes when I seriously do know better, that I opted instead for an experiment. I'd always wanted to try this.

When I got home that night, it was pouring the kind of rain that saturates you to the skin before you can even get out of the car and close the door. My experiment was to lay the overworked painting in the driveway and leave it there all night long in the rain.

In. The. Pouring. Rain.

Well, the experiment washed about seventeen pounds of dried paint off the paper and turned the dark overworked chalk drawing looking painting into a light overworked chalk drawing looking painting. Also, I'm pretty sure that a squirrel pooped on it, and I am not making that up.  

When I went back to work the following week, I worked slowly and carefully, but the damage had already been done. It was okay, and I did remove the right third to improve the composition, but it is definitely more of a failed experiment than a well executed painting by somebody who usually knows what he's doing.

So I did what I often do with the crappy ones - I Pollacked it. Just loaded brush after brush with different colors of paint and flung it at the painting with glee.  Which is what you see.

The majority of you reading this are probably not painters and it is you that the title of this blog post seeks. Because I really am curious. This painting is a failure. To me anyway. But is it interesting?