Letting go of what's precious

Late last fall I spent a day at Schoodic Point and was drawn to the cuts of ledge along the shore road (most people are drawn to the wild surf crashing against the rocks). When I got home I was eager to attack a canvas to express my experience. I had just started working with a galkyd mix medium which gives the paint an incredibly smooth fluidity. I went at it without intention of depicting reality.  I worked fast, splashing paint around and I was very excited with where this took me (top). I immediately photographed it and sent it to my dear friend, painter, and respected art historian/teacher (she looks at art all day long) for her kind but honest critique. I knew there were parts unresolved but I was so in love with some of the passages that I didn't know what to do without ruining those precious parts.  Here's what she said:   

"Wow - great start! I do agree with you that you need some further work at the botton left. I also think you need to resolve the central portion. Remember that I am just viewing a digital shadow of the actual work, but to me, there is a mushy kind of disconnect between the blue/grey foreground and what is going on in the middle and deep distance. Now if you are going for abstraction that is not an issue, and I also think even so the composition reads as top central triangle of blue/pink, slashes of yellowy green meeting in the center and more structured block like forms at the base. I think you could firm up the composition to get a stronger sense of form  no matter which way you are heading with this. As it stands now to me, everything is falling off to the left and I am just longing to get a sense of structure. Does any of this make sense to you?Maybe if you counter the dominant stretch of yellowy green running in from the left downwards with something to pull the energy back into the work?"

Hmmm. My heart sank but I knew she was right. Lack of structure in my work is the biggest criticism I get and something I always struggle with, being so involved in color. But I didn't want to touch it. I didn't want to lose the fluidity, the spontaneity.  But I've also been told by many a teacher and mentor to NOT get attached to parts of a painting and try to work around them. It never works, and I have confirmed that before. So, I let the painting sit for many weeks. I looked at it frequently but separated myself emotionally from what excited me about it. One day, I just knew what it needed and launched in as though it was a whole new painting. (bottom) There is very little of what I loved about the original left, but it is a far superior painting. And I like it more than the original stab. This is what my friend said:   "Oh! Divine, dreamy marvelous beautiful!"

Moral of the story:  don't let anything about painting become precious and untouchable.

Finished painting:  On the Rocks, 14 X 18, oil on canvas panel

Fall studio clean-out sale

About a month ago I had house guests that had never visited before and they were eager to go up to my studio and look around.  It's a mess. I had a lot of things on easel, but they took to poking through piles of work that had been set aside, most of them had never been shown for one reason or another. They kept coming up with pieces I had forgotten about that they really liked, and they even went home with a few. It gave me the idea that I should do an inventory of these works and have a studio clean-out sale this fall. So, that is what I'm doing. Images are being posted  as I get the chance to photograph them. There will be an open studio in November, I will sell them directly from the website gallery, and I will also welcome appointments to look at a specific work.  Everything from oils to charcoal sketches.

7 February 2010 - Now Showing

These two pieces are currently exhibiting at the Bangor Art Society's Members' Show, at Bangor Public Library through February. The result of several very loose gouache sketches that I did this past autumn at a friend's farm. Working on canvas this time, the work feels very different from those I've been doing on panel. Looser and lighter, with a more conservative use of paint. Leaf Peeping Time I and II. Oil on gallery wrap canvas. 18 X 18"

27 January 2010

My small daily paintings serve as kind of a warm-up exercise for me when I start in on my painting day. Most of what I have posted on my blog have been these little paintings which provide a very nice little cash flow for me while I work on a new body of work. In this new collection of work I have been focusing on abstracting the landscape. Working with less intention and allowing myself to respond to the marks, colors, and shapes as they appear on the canvas or panel. I have found this simplification of the landscape makes a much more powerful statement, and the experience of being in the moment with the painting has a spiritual quality to it. The painting here is one of my first successes, in that I achieved that experiential purity for which I strive.  I title it Dream Work, as it really feels as though I created it outside of myself.

Oil on panel, 18" X 24"