Exhausted-after three hours of painting-and writing about it only because I did something I actually like. Finished the painting? You gotta be kidding.
The amount of choices in picking up a brush and putting it to a canvas are endless. I'm gutsy enough to put on a first layer of color and a few lines, but after that, all hell seems to break loose. Any sense of satisfaction and completion goes out the window. The "correct" forms, lines and colors I obliterate to a perceived better painting is sickening-wish I could store some of these away in a box...but this isn't possible. But still, some of the stuff that gets swabbed over-it's really sad. Bits and pieces of great work, usually followed by something not even close to adequate.
Good painters make putting a great painting together look effortless. I have always stood in awe and..to some degree...jealousy. Guess it's a blessing to feel like I know my way around some of the 3D stuff I work with-don;t get on my case, now, I'm not declaring myself a genius just yet.
The amount of choices in picking up a brush and putting it to a canvas are endless. I'm gutsy enough to put on a first layer of color and a few lines, but after that, all hell seems to break loose. Any sense of satisfaction and completion goes out the window. The "correct" forms, lines and colors I obliterate to a perceived better painting is sickening-wish I could store some of these away in a box...but this isn't possible. But still, some of the stuff that gets swabbed over-it's really sad. Bits and pieces of great work, usually followed by something not even close to adequate.
Good painters make putting a great painting together look effortless. I have always stood in awe and..to some degree...jealousy. Guess it's a blessing to feel like I know my way around some of the 3D stuff I work with-don;t get on my case, now, I'm not declaring myself a genius just yet.
"How hard could it be?" I use this phrase to cajol myself into yet another attempt at making a painting. Here I am at home (I don't paint at the studio because... A) it's too damn distracting as I always have several sculptural pieces in progress B) I haven't turned the heat in the studio on yet-this morning I worked in gloves) wasting paint. I use the phrase with pleasure-coming from a frugal-thinking father who told me "a little dab of paint goes a long way", I need to gush out paint like blood from a sucking chest wound-cathartic, therapeutic, whatever words you want to use: it's good to use up paint. Make mistakes.
I turn the canvas (I work fairly small and the work stays flat-no easel) around and around, until the painting finds a direction, its own up and down. Most of the work starts out non-objective, but today a figure emerged from a vague tracery of paint and forms - just like one of those ads for gadgets on late night TV: "the Miracle Painter...it takes your creative mess and turns it-as if by magic-into a masterpiece...just add 3 AA batteries. Only $19.95, plus shipping and handling..." This seemed a good turn-something I like-good, because the past two days your truly has been hitting no creative homers or even singles. Ok, so the painting may be a little too Basquiat, but it still has merit.
Of course, now it's the following morning. The paint is a bit drier and the painting doesn't have the same excitement....already I can see where I need to do some work on it (and hopefully not kill whatever spirit it had last night)...
I guess what's left is the fact that if I worked at this painting thing, I could get better. But right now, there is sheer excitement-both elation and tragedy-in the act-if you consider process to be the most important thing about making art, it doesn't get better (or worse) than this!
Photograph of shop sign in Cordova, New Mexico.
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