Painting again

I painted this while doing Mati Mcdonough's Daring Adventures in Paint. When I do these textural backgrounds I just like them as they are and find it hard to paint over them! After a few days this suggested circus to me - probably as circus tents are usually red inside and the yellow in the middle looked a bit like a bird in flight. I promised myself I'd paint a trapeze artist at some point and then today I started painting on it again. This is unfinished but I don't want to turn it into something too realistic. Softly, softly. I do have an end purpose in mind for this one and if I pull it off I'll come back here to add another image.

I also painted on top of another background I loved  - it's moderately successful but I tried not to worry much and just go with the flow. It's hard for me being abstract.. yet I know that a straight still life might bore me a bit now.. so I am looking for some sort of combination. I really liked the apple I painted last week. These pictures aren't accurate unfortunately - just tablet shots in artifical light!

I really enjoyed the colour play in this. Believe it or not the elephant was just there in the background accidently. Look at the last picture in which I just scribbled paint on the wood. He's just a shape in the paint but the painting I was covering seemed to reveal an eye and ears....

I do love the background.  It feels like being naughty to leave it like that though. Perhaps the answer is to paint much much larger.

Are you a painter? Are you torn between realism or abstraction? Does it matter?