Anything Goes

I'm grateful for the times when (a) I know I'm in search of something, (b) I don't know what, (c) I trust I'll know when I find it, and (d) I do!

A newsletter from artist Carol Nelson announced last week that she'd created an Anything Goes Project as a challenge for myself and other procrastinators to produce one painting per day during the month of April.

I haven't produced a painting per month of late, let alone one per day. But I sat up and took notice. I knew I'd found something I'd been restless to discover.

The fact that the announcement didn't even reach my inbox until April was already half over was somehow perfect! 

I find myself skittering all over the place—adding touches to my 36 x 36" canvas in process, starting something else on a half sheet of drawing paper the next day but not returning to it the day after that, cutting up old starts from months ago, leapfrogging back to something after five days to muck about with it again, and so forth. It's a haphazard approach, but (a) I'm getting to my studio to paint daily, and … (b) anything goes! 

I haven't been this active nor this unfettered in a way long time.

work in process, third pass

5.5 x 8.5"; acrylic and collage on drawing paper

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history thus far:

first pass

second pass

Simple and Magical

Lewis Noble's approach to painting captivates me.

I head to my studio today eager to tear up the postcard on which I made a quick paint sketch yesterday, in order to collage bits of it to the quick paint sketch I made on the Core Values patch I'm revising.

Looks so simple and magical when Lewis Noble tears up one sketch and collages it to another sketch, all to visually compelling and delightful effect.

Ha ha ha!

I just have to laugh when I feel nervous before I even make the first tear!

I hesitate.

I hem and haw.

What am I so afraid of?

Eventually, I commit one piece of collage paper to my Core Values patch with glue.

And then freeze.

Again.

I spend forever moving pieces of collage this way and that, hugely indecisive, not seeing placements that sing to me.

Simple and magical???

Not so much.

But, such a fascinating puzzle to work out.

newest patch

new patch in bigger picture
work in progress
working title: Core Values

Didn't Like It

Here's a patch that I completed back in March as part of my Core Values project.

Didn't like it then.

Don't like it now.

Time to do something about that. I brush gesso over the patch in uneven thicknesses with a beat-up foam brush.

Then, with Lewis Noble as my inspiration, I start playing around with a quick sketch-like approach, making marks, painting, scratching scribbles into the paint—first on the Core Values patch and then on the back of a postcard, same colors on both.

Core Values patch moving in a new direction
with marks, paint, and scribbles

postcard with paint marker marks

postcard with collage, paint, and scribbles added