Purge

Winter time; bitter, bitter cold. More snow this morning.

I’ve written before about the benefits of working on a lot of paintings simultaneously. Working this way allows paint layers to dry thoroughly. Painting over a layer too soon leads to bad problems (to use a technical term), such as cracking and sinking in. Working this way means there is always something to do no matter how tired or uninspired I might be. For big paintings especially, it allows the painting to gestate and ripen. Thinking about and looking at paintings are important parts of my process.

If the drawing is strong and the theme true, I always find my way back to where I left off–I never lose the thread.

Frozen Lake Erie from our balcony

But if the drawing is not strong or if the theme is not true, it’s a struggle. These struggles occur for me with small paintings, believe it or not. With large paintings, the drawing takes enough time that I can identify problems before getting to the painting stage. When that happens, I simply wipe the drawing off and start over. With small paintings, problems might surface after I’ve started painting.

What kind of problems? When all is said and done, it boils down to one problem: weak theme. Some themes are perfectly suited to sketches, studies, drawings, pastels, or whatnot.  Problems can occur when such minor themes are instead turned into paintings.

I used to experiment with materials and mediums a lot. My studio journals contain hundreds of recipes and experiments. I would divide a canvas into quarters and in each quarter use a different medium and note the results. Each quarter would be an individual ‘painting.’ These paintings were spontaneous–I am a champion doodler, if I say so myself.

This spirit of experimentation sometimes finds its way into my ‘real’ paintings–small ones. The combination of weak theme with experimentation can result in lost paintings–paintings where I’ve lost the thread.

Experimenting with materials and mediums has its place, but not in ‘real’ paintings. As an exercise in discipline, I painted over several unfinished, small, ‘lost’ paintings–I purged them. The neutral grounds I applied over these lost children will be used for sketches or studies–as I should have done in the first place.