so much for the f-word painting

We drove up to Half Moon Bay to get live crab and the yellow of the mustard plants was irresistible.

The "green painting" (the one that had the unfortunate f-word at its center) wasn't working out for me, so you can guess what happened next. Or maybe not, since I am not really a landscape painter.

Here's a good example of a failed painting. But I'm still working on it, so we shall see what happens.

Bear with me on this painting, if you can stand the pain.

struggle is progress.

I think I am making progress. While it may not be evident in the paintings yet, I seem to have been able to let go of the fear and anxiety about "messing up." I am definitely more calm and willing to accept that there will be good days and there will be very, very bad days! Also, I think the fear and anxiety were partly caused by the fact that I had not painted in a very long time (a couple of years) and I had felt frustrated that I had "lost time" and was now even further behind in ever becoming a "good" painter, a "real" painter, whatever that is, in my mind.

Anyway, lately I've become more at ease with just stepping away, looking at the painting, leaving it alone, looking at it some more, all the while "puzzling" over it and then painting over it. I guess that's progress, albeit at a much slowed down pace.

I've been reading about Willem de Kooning and finding it so enlightening and re-assuring. The book is "de Kooning, An American Master" by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan.

I read that he taught one summer at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. On the first day of class, he set up a still life and told his class that they were going to work on that same still life for the entire 2 months. I've had a classes like that and balked just as his students did. However, the one thing he said, that my teacher never said, was, "You will work on it until you kill it. And then you will work on it some more until it comes back on its own." (my italics.)

Whoa. I'm very familiar with the part about working on it until I kill it. That's where the fear came in. I would get to a certain point in my paintings and not know what to do next. I'd be afraid to kill it. I had a lot of paintings that got to that stage and then were abandoned or painted over to start something completely different.

So then I read one of his friends Edwin Denby observed that he would start a painting and it would have a "striking, lively beauty" but de Kooning would look at the picture and say, "Too easy." So a few days later, "the picture would look puzzled...now a lot was happening that belonged to some other image than the first. Soon the unfinished second picture began to be pushed into a third. After a while a series of rejected pictures lay one over the other. One day the accumulated paint was sandpapered down, leaving hints of a contradictory outline ... And then on the sandpapered surface Bill started to build up the picture over again."

Shoot, I do that all the time. I thought maybe I couldn't stick to an idea because I don't necessarily start from a sketch. I start with an idea and then just paint whatever I am feeling at the moment. I figured that wasn't very "correct" but that's how I do it.

Granted, I may never have the technical skills of de Kooning, and still am not CONSCIOUSLY aware of an existential dilemma in my paintings, but suffice it to say, it's comforting to know that Willem de Kooning struggled mightily with his work.

I am happy to say that I am finally more at ease with my struggle.

can't leave well enough alone

It's been a while since I've painted, with the holidays and all. Very difficult to get going again. To make matters worse, instead of just easing back into things, like maybe starting a couple of loosening up exercises, I just decided to slap on a bunch of paint on the green painting, as if by some miracle, that would produce a finished work.

Well, it's all a process, isn't it.

I mixed up a bunch of "white" (actually it had a lot of ochre and gloss medium and some pthalo blue). I didn't like the reddish brown color I had put on the last time. There was too much of that color on the upper left corner and it started to look very much like a Christmas painting-- lots of green and red. So I decided I would basically cover up most of that reddish brown color.


The glossiness and translucency of the white came out pretty well. So it wasn't a completely failed experiment. (Plus, I erased that distracting image which I kept seeing in the center of the painting.)








In fact, I liked it quite a lot, so I rather impulsively painted on the "finished" blue and orange painting which is hanging above the mantel in our living room!
I actually think it is improved. (the one on the right)

What the F***!

So I tried to paint on the green painting again. For some reason, that four letter word kept re-appearing. When I stepped back from the painting, there it was. Am I imagining this?

Not so green, but plenty hairy

I added more layers to the green painting, but for some reason, it's looking less green. And kind of a mess. But at least the four letter word is gone. Or is it.

Green Painting

So I was pretty happy with the blue painting, but since I am not really in the habit of starting from a sketch, I figured I had to start somewhere and so I decided the next painting would be green. In color, not in environmental impact.

I'm sure this is not the most orthodox way to paint, certainly not the most efficient, but that seems to be my M.O.

Is it just me or do you see a four letter word beginning with F right smack in the middle of the painting?

What a difference a day makes.

I had just finished reading "Elaine and Bill" by Lee Hall about Willem and Elaine de Kooning. Earlier, I had been studying books on de Kooning and Joan Mitchell's incredible abstract expressionist works. They really spoke to me. Something about the rage, the energy with which their paint attacked the canvas. That's me, painting fiend, especially when on caffeine-- impatient, agitated, exhilarated, restless.

I turned on the iPod and went crazy. Maybe it was the music (LSJUMB playing Rolling Stones) but the brushstrokes hit the canvas in a frenzy, as though I was possessed. I wasn't thinking too much, just reacting, putting down paint where the painting needed it. "Where the painting needed it"? I've heard people say that, that the painting takes over. But I never thought I'd experience it.

I don't really know what came over me but I wish it would happen more often.

Anyway, here's the painting. For the time being, I'm calling it "Looking for Bill and Joan." Although I may also title it "Bundle of nerves."

BTW, this was originally the "blue" painting. Amazing how it changed from day to day!