I love working abstractly.
I hate working abstractly.
I have been working in abstraction for almost as long as I’ve been painting at this point. And the process goes something like this:
I’m drawn to something. Some instinct. (Sandra Duran WIlson calls it a First Thought...I love that.) And I follow it. And at some point I find myself lost in a painting. But not the good kind of lost. What started as so incredibly fun has turned into only questions I don’t know how to answer. So I put the painting away. For days. For weeks. For years.
I basically get to a point each and every time where I give up.
I found a painting I did in 2016 or 2017. There are parts of it I absolutely love. But it’s not finished. And I can’t even tell you why. I also can’t really tell you why I stopped at this point. Expect I was probably frustrated in the same way I was frustrated LAST WEEK and stopped.
There’s a pattern. And that’s the piece I want to explore. Pay close attention to the process and see where I experience resistance. Try to dig down into the why of that resistance.
So I’m starting this whole process with a bit of information:
- I know I like abstract painting.
- I have some starting processes that I really enjoy
- At some point in the process I experience momentum (or flow) and then at some point I experience resistance.I don’t know where or why that happens.
- I don't have a sense of the steps I take or could take to finish a painting.
- How do I finish a painting?
So the goal will be to work through a series of paintings with the goal of figuring out some of the resistance I feel and to also formalize some of the steps in a process. I don’t have to keep that forever, but maybe if I formalize some of it, I can use that brain space for other pieces of creativity and exploration.
I’m going to work through 7 canvas wrapped boards. Build them up the same way under a set of rules I decide going in. Then I will pay REALLY close attention to where I feel push back and try to figure out why.