I thought I’d give you all an update from the mini extra-bedroom art studio. I shot this video in portrait mode since it allows me to get much closer to the paintings than in landscape, so pardon if it looks a little goofy here on the blog lol. I thought most people would be watching from a phone anyway.
I had been debating with myself for a few weeks about moving on from the abstract landscapes I had been working on since last Spring. I finished 4 or 5 of those landscapes and am still experimenting with varnishing but after a busy summer and going on vacation for 2 weeks the initial inspiration had definitely waned and I was feeling the guilt of: oh no I’m losing the plot again and not finishing! But then I realized actually maybe these paintings have just served their purpose. I learned a lot and had fun with them but there was something missing. And more and more I was feeling the tug towards figure work.
There is ultimately I think just more connection for me in figurative paintings than in landscape. It’s quite funny because this should be NO surprise to me, yet it kind of was. If I’m in a museum I am rarely drawn to the landscape paintings. I do love Monet and the Impressionists but I usually get the most excitement out of their portrait work. So yeah, kind of a Duh moment there. Why am I pushing against a natural inclination lol? I do like to experiment and I’m sure I’ll do more loose landscapes, it’s just really fun, but I don’t think that is my major focus.
So I jumped in and returned to painting faces. As you can see in the video though, these portraits are very much building off of the landscapes in ink, even though they may look quite different. The first few are even in the same color scheme I was using. They turned a corner though and came into their own when I added collage. And the collage builds off of what I was already doing, throwing some ink down and then wrestling it into a shape that I wanted. Both the painting direct with ink and adding the collage pieces lets me create a chaotic kind of mess and then pick and choose the bits I like. It’s like a jumping-off point.
I didn’t mention it in the video but I am thinking of these paintings as the Sibyl Portraits. The two faces and the torso figure have this quality for me, of something trying to come forward, out of the mist or the back of the mind. As I am working on them I am most successful when I turn thinking off and just work intuitively. I try to focus I guess on guiding the figure out instead of painting it in a straightforward manner. It’s like the Steinbeck sailing quote I shared in a previous post, you have to approach the shore from a sideward angle because you cannot steer directly toward an object, it’s always moving and becomes out of reach. You can only steer towards the ideal and approach it softly. And then, be grateful if you get anywhere close and don’t completely wreck your boat in the process.
If you steer towards an object, you cannot perfectly and indefinitely steer directly at it. You must steer to one side, or run it down; but you can steer exactly at a compass point, indefinitely. That does not change. Objects achieved are merely its fulfillment. In going toward a headland, for example, you can steer directly for it while you are at a distance, only changing course as you approach. Or you may set your compass course for the point and correct it by vision when you approach. The working out of the ideal into the real is here—the relationship between inward and outward, microcosm macrocosm. The compass simply represents the ideal, present but unachievable, and sight-steering a compromise with perfection which allows your boat to exist at all.
-John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez
Sibyl Portraits: process and inspiration