Tag Archive for: oil painting

Starting Over

Starting a new painting can be like starting over. The last two painting that I posted, “Floating Underwater” and “Big Waves” gave me immense satisfaction to complete. I really like them, feel good about the new direction they are pointing to and I’ve been inspired to get started on the next painting. In fact, in my mind, I had developed a whole system of starting new paintings based on my success with these two. Much to my chagrin, the process of starting has all the uncertainty and angst that it always had. Now that I am actually working, I have no idea where I want to go. I am making sketches and small paintings and each interests me in some way but none are the painting I want to do next.

I always seem to rebel against doing what worked in the past, and it pisses me off. For example, my latest successful work was done with thick, opaque paint. So of course I would need to go back and experiment with translucent washes using acrylic and oil paint almost like watercolor.

I just re-listened to a wonderful interview with writer, Nicole Krauss about her creative process. In it she says that once when she was having a hard time starting a new novel, she talked with the seasoned novelist Phillip Roth. He told her to resign herself to the fact that starting a new novel is always hard, it never gets better.  This isn’t a bad thing. In the interview she talks about starting in the dark, not knowing how things are going to come together and the process of discovery.

Nicole Krauss Interview

Here are some of my starts from today and yesterday:

In this sketch I was planning to build up a piece with with and burnt umber but there was something about the lightness of the touch and the way the paint sinks into the paper that made me stop.

 

Here is the next attempt. I was attracted to same qualities of paint, but I think I will continue with white and go opaque.

 

Here is a color study using thin washes of oil paint. I almost forgot that there was a theme that emerged from this – fertility. There was a figure resembling an ancient fertility sculpture (it got painted over). Then the colors that emerged made me think of fertile ground, mountain sides planted in tea, lush growth. I’m glad I remembered this!

 

I think this was influenced by photos of the space shuttle launch.

A swan – what else to say? I find it interesting that the composition is so clean and clear.

Abstraction 3

 

Themes of water and powerful currents are  recurrent in my recent, unplanned paintings. Here I see a structure, a focal point overwhelmed by floodwaters. It is holding its ground for now but it’s uncertain how long that can last. The structure has integrity and a sense of place but there is no way to know if it will stay or be swept away. In a sense that’s insignificant as the emphasis is on the energy and movement of water – that is the focus of the painting.

Painting a Story

I wrote about this diptych a couple posts ago. It’s called, “Floating.” I painted with the intention to let a story emerge even though I had no idea what the story was – and a story did emerge. I have been hesitant to show this kind of work in the past because I was never sure if there was a real story or if the images had meaning, so this time as I worked with an awareness of meaning and the developing narrative and now I know for sure that the images do have meaning for me. What I would like to know is whether the painting is intriguing or meaningful to other people. Please leave a comment and let me know if there is a story or meaning that emerges for you or if you would like my interpretation of the painting.

Saving an Abandoned Painting

After finishing “Rooftop Dancers,” I wanted to continue with another large, figurative painting. I had an old canvas that was the size I wanted. It was a piece that had been sitting unfinished in the basement for several years. I was going to take the canvas off the frame and re-stretch it, but I couldn’t quite do it. I had to give to painting another chance.

I started the piece in winter from a photograph and a smaller version of the same scene. I was a bit stuck and was having a hard time with color, so I painted the whole painting with white paint, bringing out the image solely through texture. The plan was to bring in delicate, translusent color glazes, but I have no experience with glazing and it didn’t work out the way I had hoped. I wished that I had left it white, because it was quite nice at that stage.

I decide to go back into it and just paint leaving the underlying texture as I could but not worrying too much about preserving it. I took this photograph after playing around with the sky and a few other areas. I am also including a close-up to show texture.

The smaller version of the scene was published last summer in Shambala Sun Magazine.