Beginning New Artwork
Painting as inquiry, leaps of faith, and getting to know our work as it emerges
Sometimes emergent work is not linear… we get to know it in an inside-out fashion. It arises as an impulse, a gesture finding itself, and then only over time reveals its true shape.
I want to make BIG paintings this year.
I want to make paintings that I can wander in and get lost, paintings that fill my field of vision, paintings that make me a little uncomfortable, and paintings that surprise and delight me. I want to make paintings that blur my edges and invite me to get closer and closer still. Big enough for a swan dive. Big enough to immerse myself, to let myself sink below its flickering surface and see how long my oxygen lasts. Baptism by painting.
I stretched a canvas last fall that is almost as tall as I am, and several inches wider than my armspan. I had to set it aside for a while to work on other things, and the turning of the year has brought me back to it. At the start of each painting session, I have to find the thread of where I left off; I ask for a way in. I sit for a while, letting my eyes unfocus slightly and float over the surface, relaxing my mind into an open state of receptivity. I look at the painting and sometimes I have the sensation that it’s looking back. We are considering one another. I am knocking on its door and it is taking its own sweet time deciding how to let me in. Eventually, usually, somehow, I suddenly know what to do. I mix some color, pick up my brush, and begin.
Beginning a new body of work is a leap of faith, especially at the beginning when you don’t know where it’s going to take you, what it needs, or even precisely what it’s about. I’ve started a few of these large paintings with a phrase in my head—Invented Weather. This play on words touches on how we have collectively manufactured the climate changes we are seeing more and more evidence of, and also the “invented” digital landscape collages I am creating as reference material for these paintings: bits of extreme weather images from the news mixed with my photos that I take on walks and satellite screen captures. This collage is just my starting point, and I know from experience that where it goes from here is a collaboration between myself and the paintings, a dialog between intention and execution. My faith is not in a specific outcome but rather in the process itself, the steady trust that if I continue to show up and work on it, something will emerge. The idea finds expression through my brush, my gestures, and the materials I’ve chosen. It also finds its limits in my hesitation, my impatience, my fear, my uncertainty.
This week, as I get closer to this painting possibly (hopefully?) being finished, I am struck by my inability to judge it at all. My initial reaction to it is that I like it but I can’t tell if it’s going to hold up over time or if I’m getting it to where it needs to be. I’m just too close to it. There’s a whole lot of not knowing, even after I’ve made the thing. I look at it and I can’t see it. It’s weird, but paintings usually take time to settle into coherence.
It’s uncomfortable, this uncertainty, but it’s also one of the things I love about making art. I love the process of making something and encountering something wholly unfamiliar. Sometimes emergent work is not linear… we get to know it in an inside-out fashion. It arises as an impulse, a gesture finding itself, and then only over time reveals its true shape. I won’t know for a while if this painting is done, or if I’ll end up painting over parts of it–it needs some time to settle without my interference and I need some time to get perspective on it, so I’ll set it aside, maybe turn it to the wall for a while, and let it rest. Meanwhile, I’ll work on other paintings while I give this one a little break, and one day soon I’ll flip it around and see it with fresh eyes.
Thank you so much for being here and reading! Until next week,
I love hearing more about your internal process! We approach things very differently, but I can pick out all of these threads of similarity at the same time - and many ways I can learns from you, or places where you are doing something I aspire to. Can't wait to see where your new work takes you!