Tag: painting

Struggling a bit with this one. I think I’ve figured out why. “Paint a figure study in oils” is basically my artistic default setting: it’s an almost automatic response to a blank canvas. But my oil painting technique is slow and methodical and involves building lots of layers and occupying the same mindset for as long as it takes to finish the damn thing. I am not in the right frame of mind for that just now. My interests are all over the place and I’m acting on impulse a lot and I’m not in the mood for reflection. Gotta find a new technique. 

Detail, work in progress (torso). Oil on paper. 

Another abstract piece I’ve been working on in recent weeks. It’s possible this blitz of colour is partly a reaction to the onset of winter. I’m not ready to submit. The wildflowers are gone, the leaves are vanishing and it’s too goddamn dark. 

This painting isn’t quite finished and I think there’s something sinister about it…a sort of shadow hanging in the centre like an ill omen. I’m not sure if I should fix it. 

Work in progress, oil on linen, 36 x 55".

Here’s how that abstract piece is turning out. Still some tweaking needed, but probably of the subtle type that will make no discernible difference to anyone but me. 

Effaced (working title) Oil on linen, 34.5 x 39.5". 

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).