Prison Bars and Roses (Scarlet Letter project), painting as of Mar 19, 2025

Here is my painting as of Mar 19, 2025.  I am painting this for a special event next week at the Salem Athenaem, held to commemorate the  175th anniversary of Nathanial Hawthorne's novel "The Scarlet Letter." At least 10 paintings will be on display for the occasion.  My painting is based a quotation from the novel, seen below.* In my painting, prison bars serve as background for the text, and the wild rose bush (also mentioned in the quotation) is seen through the prison window.  The long branches of the rose bush suggest the scarlet letter A which is so important in the novel.  On March 19th, I started working on the sides of the window, and added this purple.  But don't panic:: this was not intended as the final color.  My idea was to use a very dark gray, almost black, for the window frame.  I decided to build the color in layers, rather than mix it, starting with a layer of purple, to be followed with a layer of brown, and then paine's gray.  I was planning to use the same dark grey on the sides of the canvas (to seal it), so also extended the purple on the sides of the canvas.  In fact, I ended up changing my mind about the dark windowsill, more on that later, but meanwhile here is the painting with a purple border.

*Here is the quotation from Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter::

"But on one side of the portal and rooted almost at the threshold was a wild rose bush covered, this month of June, with its delicate gems which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom in token that the deep heart of Nature would pity and be kind to him."