paintings are mysteries we are compelled to investigate

a snap of WIP (works in progress) on the wall in my studio

Last year, I posted about some paintings that were works in progress.   One painting did come close to completion, but I lost the groove and in the end, I ended up putting them both aside. Recently, I fished them out of the closet, blew off the metaphorical dust, and started working on them again.  

I've gone from here:

to here:

The dress is the front half of an actual antique doll dress adhered to the canvas (now under many layers of paint, gesso, paint, pastel, pencil, paint.....) My original concept referenced a Mary Oliver poem called Sleeping in the Forest.

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

I just wasn't happy, so gesso-ed over much of the painting, and started again a couple weeks ago.  I haven't worked on it in a week or so, as I needed to step back from the piece to let some things percolate.  I can hear it's voice calling to me again, which is always good.

And for this one:

I liked the content, but the painting was too bottom heavy, not balanced.

Now, that one looks like this:

New and more layers, with places from which to move forward.

I also had adhered the back half of the same antique doll dress used in the first painting above to a canvas and had begun a painting that had petered out into nothingness.

Here's where I am with that one:

 

I actually have a couple of other pieces in progress.  They are in that beginning phase where so much is unresolved.  I like having multiple pieces going at once in my studio. When I have just one, I tend to not let things dry that really need to dry, or I keep working when I really need to step away.  

Painting has always given me puzzles to be solved. The impulse, the need to make hooks us, and the puzzles, they reel us in. Paintings become mysteries we are compelled to investigate.

That's what the process of painting really is, isn't it?  

While we paint, we look deeply, listen to our intuition, bring to bear our education, employ our skills.  Each mark we make on the surface represents a single choice plucked from dozens of possibilities.  

This is why our art is in the process of creation and not the final outcome.  

This is why we can look at a painting, and realize the puzzle hasn't been solved, the mystery of getting what we wanted to say out onto the canvas hasn't concluded, and we sally forth with enthusiasm, making, creating, working, puzzling...

 

Comments

[Tina]

So much gorgeousness here! The transformation and depth are fascinating to me. I'm loving painting but don't have a clue what I'm doing.