A Look Back and a Look Forward
I recently took a look back at some of my older works. I was looking for what I love in them now. Wondering, what did I love in them at their creation?
I love the bold colors and soft lines and large areas of the freely made gestures in the work. As a gal new to painting I had less talk in my head from my inner critic. The more I paint the louder she has gotten. She wins sometimes and my paint seems to stiffen, I will quiet her and tame her.
I was hunting for clues as to where my work was headed.
I can see the influences of that time, the work of the artist’s books I was reading and the artist’s images I was printing out and saving as their works captivated me, the online classes I took.
The progression of work as I look at them more closely now I can see they have become more non-representative and abstract. Abstract art, then and now, is what captivates me.
My first acrylic work is of a red apple on a very tiny canvas board, Pictured here and maybe 4 x 4 inches.
Another early work has an abstract figure in it. That was the only time in my early work that a figure appeared. They are beginning to show up in the work-in-progress on my painting walls today. I wonder will they continue to show up.
Missing in all three of those earlier pieces was collage elements. Collage has long been a big influence on me and a part of my materials toolbox. I was creating collages long before I picked up a paint brush.
I was pleased to note that I was already beginning to work on blending colors and to create work with multi-layers.
So today I spent some time in my journal, visualizing a years worth of work come next autumn and answering three prompts I had read. The results were surprising and enlightening. They are:
What do I see as a vision of a year’s work:
I visualize works with textures that light, or closely aligned, blended colors enhance with the use of shadow and light. And these works will have an overlay of bold, contrasting calligraphic types sweeping marks or mark.
What I need to do to arrive at that junction next year:
I need to play with texture mediums to learn their properties, and to really pay attention to shadow and light, even though these will often be in the palest of colors. And I need to play with and focus on brushstrokes, both for the texture and for the bold marks on both large and small substrates.
And what are my fears in doing this or attempting this work:
I am afraid that I will fail. I paint intuitively, what I term "a call and response" way of layers and mark making. I am afraid if I veer towards the visualization of my work as in the prompt above I will lose the life of the work. And that could be because of using a painting prescription or process thought out ahead of time.
I am excited to begin this next round of exploration and play with paint and mixed media. Stay tuned!
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