Recent Work

Spent yesterday trying to paint-mostly, I worked on older canvases. I DO like pushing the paint around, but noticed that I have a few characteristics when I work.

I’d appreciate ANY feedback on this as it is an issue that I’m struggling with. Unfortunately, you have to contact me at handmade@netcarrier.com, because I can’t figure out why the “contact” button below does not work.

Easy enough to start, I work the canvas without a sketch. Throwing down paint, any color paint, starts the process. I work from within the brain and hope for shape/form to emerge. Yes, I have a real issue with the fact that establishing foreground and background is a real problem-in this I have realized just how important this is (and in that, the true face of wishy-washy painting-of work that is non-committal/shy/the opposite of self-assured). Working on small (24 X 24) canvases, I work on them flat on a surface. Although this is comfortable, I turn the work freely-I do this until much later:I sort of work into an orientation (or NOT!)…I think that this might be both helping and hurting me-on one hand, it’s not real easy. On the other, it lets me pick and choose the most advantageous orientation-of course, this can change from moment to moment.
The splashing around part is really fun. So different from working in hard surfaces-but also much harder to back-pedal and change stuff. Sure, the paint dries fast but the mind is going even faster and to wait for something to dry so you can effectively white it out and start over takes TOO LONG. The wisp of a thought which somehow can be transferred to a brush (if you’re quick enough) can be just as easily lost. Dunno how weird this might sound, but it seems as though I work with lots of half formed stuff while I’m painting:I really like this about painting-it’s just not that present in sculpture, my medium of “choice.” Painting is doing construction with the ethereal and elements only gel (and gain a history) when the paint is dry. Thereafter, those elements can be painted over, new elements may superimpose, but the evidence of the past remains. Maybe this is more in my head than in actual fact, but this is how I think. Kind of a strange attachment or quirk, but I see no parallel to this in my sculptural work. Ghosts in the paint. (If you have never read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” try this one-it is an amazing spooky, metaphoric, 6000 word short story, first published in 1891…)
One device that I have used once or twice is to paste down a paper element that can be recognized-i.e., it comes with a built-in up and down. Also, this is a hard, committed element-so even if I’m wishy-washy with my paint, this thing will remain an anchoring point. When this works, it’s great. But I dislike being committed to where the pc is going before I lay down any pigment. I could just paint over this little device, and treat it like a launch pad…
Subject matter has been another problem point for me. I want to stay away from the head-I know this subject pretty well and find myself (much like with carving) almost in knee-jerk fashion, making the same head over and over. If I try and get “creative” with this, it becomes a head shaped canvas with floaty stuff going on inside. Not good.
I’m going to shoot 3 paintings-apologies for the photos (I am supposed to get a copy stand and hope this will help me to make better images, but I don’t have it yet). One I think of as relatively successful (not that the fact that I like it makes it better) and another (which I started yesterday) is still a bit lost in terms of just what it’s trying to say. The third is even more mired in doubt, although I’ve worked on it longer-this one was started a while ago and I reworked it yesterday-I felt as though it was going somewhere, then I just lost it. Again.
See what you think. No titles (yet) for these 24” X 24” canvases. The first (blue) one is finished (well, it is as of today-that could change!)