Work in Progress…..
Work in progress, I started this 30x40 last night, and all I could think about was the blue shapes, they just kept floating around in my head and needed somewhere to live.
Day 2 progress in the studio. I love working this big, the parts and pieces just seem to flow better the bigger I go. I think I know where I am headed, but you never know. There is always a curve ball thrown at some point in the process that changes everything and sends me into a different direction. I guess we will see what happens!
And now we enter the awkward teenager phase. All previous ideas of what this would become are out the window, the composition is unbalanced and the angles are wrong, but it’s on it’s way, pointy elbows and all, to become what it was meant to be despite what was expected.
What do I even say at this point? After several hours in the studio over complicating this piece, I had to cover large portions of heavy detail in order to redefine the structure. It’s always the parts I like the most that end up covered in the name of a decent composition. Onward…
Very rarely, for me, I find that the work just stops speaking to me. It doesn’t say anything and it doesn’t do anything for me. This isn’t something that happens all that often, especially with a piece this size. But after spending some time with it I realized it was time to start over. One thing that my art teacher years ago taught me, “nothing is precious” she said. Over the years that comes back to me at moments like this, and I am reassured that I am doing the right thing as I cover hours of labor and who knows how much paint with blank white gesso so that I can start all over again. It’s got to feel right, when it doesn’t, it’s time to let go and start fresh.
Eventually, I decided to restretch the canvas and start fresh. Too many lumps and bumps. I then created this piece in a matter of 2 days, sometimes that is just how things work, that initial idea that would have been fine if I had just left it alone would have worked beautifully, but overthinking killed it. This image, came to me after driving past the same field of dead corn stalks everyday for weeks….each reflecting the light at various angles, but there was such a cadence to the way they had been planted, even rows of planned growth. Their job done they had begun to return to the earth, breaking down and creating something unexpectedly beautiful.
