A New Painting
The above image is me dialoguing with a few cohorts about a painting in our living room that I started last fall. I lost my direction for several months but have resumed working on it once again. I’m running up against the same issues I’ve been struggling with for my digital images, this over-controlled analysis of space and shapes. It’s so intensely organized that it begins to lose any sense of “feeling.” Interestingly my video work seems inhibited by this same compulsive control-freakishness. I need to learn to let go.
My plan is to take this painting out in the backyard and bust up some of the rigidity in the paintings structure, with the careless application of paint and clear-gel medium. I believe in a push/pull process for painting, where you organize, then let chaos take over for a bit, then find some organization in that, and then let go again. The beauty that catches my attention in a successful painting lies in the balance between meticulous design and chance. Obviously, looking at any of the paintings I’ve ever done, the “chaos”part is a struggle for me.