PAINTING

Having defined drawing for myself, painting more or less became almost everything else. Wet on wet, wet on dry, and dry on wet media all feel like painting to me. The focus is definitely more on areas of colour rather than linearity. Where I use drawing more often to define and model something else, painting feels more about massing-in…a process in itself

I can’t cite the origin of this quote, but I recall reading a review of post-expressionist paintings…”Remember that, before a painting is anything else, it is one area of colour set against another.”

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.

Steve Jobs

Painting also implies a greater investment of time and intent. Preparing supports whether I work on canvas or paper, mixing the paint (in high school I was taught to work from primarily colours, white and black), and setting aside enough time to work so that the paint won’t be wasted.

When I started painting again in 2018, I also took a page out of my drawing playbook and learned slowly how to paint with a sense of play, of improvisation. This was a hard transition for me to make as I’d spent most of my life thinking of drawing as preparatory work leading up to a finished product – the painting. But I soon got over that and set myself up so that I could paint a lot, exploring many different ideas and techniques quickly and efficiently.

Do not try. Do.

Yoda

I made dozens of small masonite boards to which I could tape watercolour paper. I thinned down my acrylic paint so I wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time making “this” specific colour or viscosity of paint. Instead I worked with liquid primary colours, black and white, and allowed the layering of the paint layers to develop colour complexity.

Paintings would evolve as I worked, making a single stroke or taking a single action and then allowing that board to dry on a drying rack at which point I’d take another action or make another stroke. I’d have 10-12 paintings on the go at a time which allowed me to cover a lot of ground, but also worked really well with my schedule. I’d take a few quick actions and move on to other things I needed to do that day while I waited for the paint to dry. Through this process I got a sense of the kind of things I wanted to see and invariably (though slowly) this process led me in directions I found really gratifying.