Haven’t been painting lately, the retreat has long been sounded on three different pieces I’ve been working on – haha, it’s not pretty at all. But, today I had an epiphany about one of those paintings which has been eluding me since last October. As the piece got going initially, I remember that I had a distinct feeling about what the painting was to be about. I didn’t know what it would ultimately look like – but I knew what it was about on a gut level as soon as I saw it materialize. It was slow to come together as I worked on it and I kept going over the same areas without making much progress. At some point in December 2009, I got stuck. I realize now that part of the reason that that happened is I wasn’t been able to connect the intuitive feeling that I had about the painting directly with my painting ability. To put it more literally, I started something that I didn’t have the “chops” to finish. This prospect is somewhat frightening since I’ve been painting with acrylics since the Spring of my senior year of high school in 1991 and after thousands of hours of this stuff you would think that I’d be pretty capable by now. So it goes without saying that this is a fairly surprising revelation, but it seems that I can’t argue with it (given the current state of the painting). I recognize now that something new is happening and I believe the challenge offered is to find some new ways to move forward that require an even greater awareness of what it is I am doing. The end result may not be that my painting style changes (yet), but I do know that I need to learn how to be more direct when it comes to saying what I mean and knowing what I mean to say. After all, this piece is actually not meant to be an abstract painting – it just looks that way because I’ve not been direct with either myself – or the viewer.
Stay tuned.
Underworld. So dope.