Wow

I did it—I captured what I wanted to!

I couldn't put words to the feeling and didn't have a specific image in mind, but now: feeling and image, manifested in paint.

When I set out over a week ago with an itch to scratch, I could not have imagined this particular painting would be the outcome.

But … if *I* didn't imagine it, then who did?

I knew at each step what to reject, what to keep. I knew precisely when to stop.

Wow.

An Invitation You Are Not Permitted to Decline
6x6"; acrylic, latex, India ink, pastel, and collage on canvas board
abstract
2018
[gift]

Breakthrough

oh!

Finding my voice …

starting to collage on top of paint layers

Liminal Hints

The painting I started five days ago has presented an engaging conundrum: I want to capture a feeling. But, how?

It's one thing to paint intuitively, to just make marks and brushstrokes, knowing that whatever I'm feeling is most likely playing out in some way on my canvas. That's hard enough, but it's something I've grown into gradually.

It's another thing, and a harder thing by far at the moment, to have some sense—though in no way a clear sense—of a particular feeling I want to convey, and to then try to manifest visually that feeling … for which I have no visual reference.

The word liminal comes to mind: of, relating to, or situated at a sensory threshold : barely perceptible or capable of eliciting a response. I'd say that about sums up the vague stuff I've been trying to find words for here!

In any case, my brain has been working hard while I sleep, offering up what I think of as liminal hints as to ways to proceed.

So today I cut a piece from a book jacket I'd saved, and used it as a support for collaging. I think somehow this sheet of collage may move me forward.

Here's what I've accumulated in the past few days:

acrylic and ink covering an old painting on 6x6" canvas board

acrylic skin

book jacket with first pieces of collage

collaged book jacket

Impatient Artist

A few smartass, rebellious, and/or lackluster moments aside, I was pretty much a compliant, please-the-teacher, strive-for-good-grades kind of student during my years of formal schooling.

That said, a distinctly impatient, let-me-learn-by-doing streak shows up as early as kindergarten when the project at hand is to create a Santa Claus head from construction paper. By 'create' I mean use the supplies and instructions provided by the teacher. When Miss Williams demonstrates how to make accordion folds in strips of white paper for assembling Santa's beard, I just cannot sit through the instructions—I grab that white paper and get to work folding, figuring it out as I go.

Done!

That Santa beard—or, more specifically, that kindergarten Dotty—comes to mind today when I decide I want to make an acrylic skin for possible use in my current work in progress. I can't quite remember the order of steps needed to make an acrylic skin so I pause to look online, but I just cannot sit through those youtube videos. I skim through 21 minutes' worth of footage in about two minutes, grab what I need and get to work, figuring it out as I go.

Done!

acrylic skin ready for use once blue tape is removed
and once sheet of clear arylic is lifted from the plastic sheet
on which both paint and gel medium were applied

Constraints

My constraints today: (1) only a few minutes to play in my studio and (2) feeling stumped.

Tension arises from the combination of my having a pre- but barely-conceived idea in mind, not knowing how I might reach toward that idea, and resisting my intuition's call to let go of any specific outcome to instead respond to the canvas as it evolves.

The tension is just that: tension. Something pulled tight. Neither 'good' nor 'bad,' just something of which I am aware.

So.

I draw some lines with pencil and ruler.

I yield to the unpredictability of tracing those lines with a temperamental ink applicator.

Now I need to turn my attention elsewhere, so I prop this little 36 square inches of canvas on my desk, where it will catch my eye off and on until I get back to my studio tomorrow. Wonder what will percolate in the interim.

pencil lines
work in progress

India ink on top of pencil lines
work in progress

Who's in Charge Here?

I have an idea I want to capture in paint, a feeling actually, the feeling of a particular afternoon from a few weeks ago. Not sure how having a vague idea and a conscious desire to express a feeling will play out.

I select a 6x6" substrate (canvas board this time) that I painted in 2014 and never liked. Dab some colors on the surface straight from paint tubes.

2014 painting done at Prince Edward Island

Move the paint around with a scruffy hardware-store brush, a foam brush, and my finger. Scratch the surface with a metal skewer.

first layer of coverup

Keep adding and moving paint around, do a bit of stenciling with a piece of mesh.

additional layers

This isn't how I planned to start this experiment at all, but my thinking brain gets mostly usurped by my intuition and body who tag-team and take over.

Another Quiet Gray Winter Afternoon

Tiny tweaks.

A title.

And spray paint on the message side of the postcard!

The Land Rolls a Little Like the Sea
4x5"; acrylic, ink, and collage on card stock
abstract
2018
[gift]