Switching Gears

I was off to a great start last week with seed pods for inspiration and all kinds of good intentions and energy for creating three more botanical fantasy paintings.

It’s important that I do paint them because, a few months ago, when I was excited about painting botanical stuff, I submitted a brief to the local arts council along with images of a few that I’ve already painted and they have awarded me with a solo show in the spring. Yay, me! I was very happy! Then came the “oh, crap, now I’ve got to paint about 15 more of the same” moment. And I have now 15 weeks in which to make it happen. That’s a lot of painting. And I’ve sorta lost my mojo around the subject.

Things began well enough. I prepared three canvases to work on simultaneously, and had a pretty clear plan for each, as I talked about here last week. I was happy with my charcoal drawings and felt good about the first layer of paint.

Then I had this idea of painting so that each could stand alone, or they could be a diptych or triptych. Why? I dunno. Seemed like a good idea at the time. It wasn’t.

I ran into difficulty tying to get strong compositions for each because it is an unusual format. I’ve used this size canvas many times, but always vertically, not horizontally. Nevertheless, I persisted.

I liked the next bit well enough.

And then things started to go south. I added more colors, which I then removed them because everything got garish, then I added more complexity with shapes and layers and things for too busy. It just kept going from bad to worse.

What a mess, right? I can’t even show you how bad it eventually got. There was no saving it. I ended up swashing whatever light colors were left on my palette and covering nearly everything up. Total frustration.

And I know why.

I am bored with botanical fantasies! I’m done, it’s over, I need to move on! I want to paint wacky people again! Buuuut, now I have a show I’m committed to, so what to do?

I decided to give myself a day to play, free from the deadline, free from the subject matter and just enjoy painting. So I took those 3 canvases and I drew weird faces on them and began to paint for the sheer joy of it. And here’s what’s happening:

Not finished yet, but I am so much happier making something that I have some energy around.

I’m pretty sure that one of the images I submitted for the show had a figure in it. This one does have some botanical elements, and it certainly is fantastical, right? Technically, it fits the brief.

I think the collection for the show will just have to be a bit broader in subject matter than I had planned. But, hell, I’m an artist: it’s my nature to shake things up.

If you’d like to see more of my work, you can find me here or here on Instagram.

Thanks for coming along for the ride!