Painting Just For Me...

Archives - 1988 - Magnolia 5 - W/C - 22 x 30

Prepping for another surge of family at the lake house... will be out of pocket for the next week... but that's another story...

As most who follow these wanderings know, I'm not one to stay too long on a chosen path. At some point I must (briefly or not) shift directions and either explore something new or revisit something from the past. The latter is the current infatuation, a journey back into realism combined with a medium I've never really mastered but will give one more try... oils.

An FB friend mentioned this Josef Albers quote: "Knowledge does not destroy spontaneous work; rather, it ceates a solid base for it."

I consider this research for knowledge... painting directly from an old photograph, similar to the w/c above, but in oil. First I'll work as realistically as possible on a small canvas, sharpening eye/hand coordination, reaching back to a time when this was my primary way of working. I knew exactly what the finished work would look like: nearly identical to the photograph. Second purpose is to get the feel for oils again... not as a big-brush-palette-knife abstract process but an exploration in color mixing and detail application. If things work out, I'll move to larger supports.

Why? First, to make sure I can still make the calls... that I'm not controlled by habit and routine. Where's the creativity in that? Things have become so predictable in the studio the challenge has left the room. I've a large inventory spread across several states and I don't really need to keep growing it at this point. So now is the time to play... to see what I can still do, to entertain new thoughts that may lead to just time out to paint for me... or a new direction all together.

I'll take sketch and w/c materials with me this next week... since I won't really be in charge, maybe I'll find time to work on that eye/hand coordination thing...