New painting

I enjoy painting in gouache. It's a versatile medium to accommodate a busy schedule. I leave my paint out and ready to go at any given time. Even if I have ten minutes or ten hours I can pick the paint up or leave it for later. I spent about a day or so painting this. When I use gouache I'm usually thinking that I'm doing a study and pretty soon I realize I'm making a complete work.

This painting was teetering on study or finished piece and I began to slide into a good painting zone in my head. I hadn't used any cobalt blue. It's a beautiful blue but normally doesn't mix well with other colors but I picked it up anyway. I was in the process of breaking things down by drowning the surface in watery  washes and trusting intuition, I applied the cobalt. I went from thinking I was going to be up very late painting to I think I need to sign this and go to bed!

This also turned some rocks over in the thinky part of my brain and the title came to me as well. The cobalt was  only in isolated areas. One spot loosely applied and one with more specificity. It clicked in my head like the cobalt was this virus or infection and to battle an infection you take some of the virus and manipulate it to make a vaccine or antidote. The virus is ambiguous and the antidote is known and specific. I came across the term "Target Pathogen" as I looked in to this idea more and this became the title. "Target Pathogen #371" I want to use this title again so to distinguish this from future images I plan to use random numbers. If I label it #1, that will probably be the last time I use the title.