Now that the roof is done, the house projects are winding down for the summer, I am finding more time in the studio – which has been cleared of all the roofing tools and now has enough space to make some art. Because I am a sadist and enjoy getting frustrated with medium, I brought out my oil paints. I really wrestle with them. I’ve been painting since college (so…um…27 years as I write this!) so it’s not like I don’t know how. Just that I am aware of the cultural baggage painting carries, as well as the fact that good painters are sooooooo much better at their craft and process. And I often settle into a malaise over unfinished paintings, which always look terrible to me and I wonder why I even tried. Yet I proceed, because I don’t know, why not? And occasionally, a painting turns out well enough that it gives me enough juice to try again. These paintings have some of that juice for me, so I’m sharing them here.
The painting above was based on a sketch I did this summer flying over Madeira, contemplating the Hilma af Klint paintings I had just witnessed at the Grand Palais in Paris. I was working with the mountain motif, shapes and ovals, and I tried focusing on color – using rich warm reds and oranges, with deep sensuous blues. Some of it as a kind of eros energy. It was …weird. But also it wasn’t quite working out for me. It felt unpolished. And now I had entered that murky self-doubt and malaise of mood. So of course, I covered all the color in black and gray, though there is still a little color showing through. Now, I kind of like it!
I had some extra black paint on the canvas, took one of my previous unfinished paintings on a 12×12″ wood panel, and did this. Mixing with liquin and gamsol (thinner) and scraping it around produces some nice textures:
And this painting, a pretty straight-up mountain/moon landscape. It has a bit of Rainier/Tahoma in its appearance – a totem I continually return to, either from the view at Maple Leaf Park (if she comes out from the cloud cover), or in my sort-of-annual pilgrimages to her base. This one turned out OK. 14×18″ on canvas:
