Tag: figure

Moue (unfinished), circa 2008. Oil on something, probably cotton. 

An unfinished figure study that never saw the light of day. I have no idea where this is now. Painted over, probably. 


I’m trying to get back into figure-based stuff. Looking back at older work, I now realize two unnerving things: 1) I have a terrible track record when it comes to finishing things and 2) I used to be better at drawing than I am now. 

SO. hello. 

Since the move, I have been really, really unfocused. I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s…fine, actually. It’s great. I am not worrying about the future, or dwelling on things that don’t matter, or making any plans whatsoever beyond the level of “maybe I will buy a nice pencil today”. My sleep patterns are all over the place, I am probably drinking too much and I think I have forgotten how to read but that is okay. For now. 

Since my attention span is shot, I am not committing to any large-scale or long-term painting projects just now. Instead, in the spirit of spontaneity, I’ve been messing about with low-fi, quick & dirty, one-off print techniques – monoprint/monotype, frottage, collagraph, and what-have-you.

Untitled prints, water-based ink on various papers.

I’ve been working on about 8 things at the same time, which is really not very satisfying. It seems to take forever to finish anything, not least because every canvas I touch lately seems to go through about 6 incarnations before it approaches completion. It’s as if they’re going through some maddening Buddhist cycle of rebirth, dying an ignominious death over and over, while I have to remind myself not to get attached. 

Above, for example, is a stalled portrait that is now being swallowed up by abstraction. I felt awfully guilty about this at first, as if I was wronging the model somehow by painting over her. Then I decided I was nothing if not lord and master of my own domain, and I was not going to allow myself to feel guilty about a failed painting festering in the corner of the studio. Now she’s being eaten by these little blades of colour and I’m a lot more optimistic about the direction the work is going. Still not enlightened, but maybe a step closer. 

Oil on linen (detail).