Works in progress

I've been working on a couple of new paintings that appeared in an earlier posting. These pieces are based on shape drawings I've been making for years. Some are ideas that started as doodles on notebook and scrap paper I saved in a folder or glued into sketchbooks. The concept of springing off casual sketches is interesting to me.

When I was a young art student in college I struggled to find a subject. For me it was a great frustration. I felt I could technically do anything presented by my instructors, but the lack of a subject often left me stuck, and the quality of work reflected my floundering. It was not that I couldn't draw, or paint, or sculpt. Landscape and figurative images were not a struggle, but these at the time were subjects used for practicing technique, and I was looking to create original thematic work that possessed some emotive quality. The landscape and figure are somehow related to everything I create, as they probably are for most artists. The challenge is to find what it is within, about, around, or outside those subjects that is important, and to express that skillfully to others through a personal, visual voice.

I don't know if I'm explaining myself clearly. It's a struggle to even explain the struggle! The fact is creating something starts with the conception of an idea. Birthing the work takes energy, and sometimes the birth is easy. Other times, the labor continues for quite a while, and there are contractions where progress is made, and then you rest before the next push.

Over time I began to understand how to find the subject matter through observing and reflecting on thoughts and information, making connections between issues I found important or interesting and imagining ways to express my interpretations of them through visual forms. This imagining involves letting my mind play with an idea, exploring all the corners and boundaries of expressive possibility. This is an exciting step in the creative process, since it's where the creation of the art really takes place. Sometimes it's possible to arrive at the complete piece in my mind to the point it's as clear as if the canvas has already been painted. It then comes down to the application of technical effort to material to move the work from personal consciousness out to the world.

For me, there's sometimes a reversal of the process, at least from the perspective of producing an image, for instance, based on a conscious effort. Some of the doodles I produce provoke a strong response personally, and initially it might appear to be simply a reaction to the formal qualities of the image. As I work on developing the image further through sketches or painting, a thematic concept emerges from my subconscious and connects to the image. So, I think that sometimes a work can start as an abstract, formal composition that gains an associated theme later on. The two pieces I'm working on currently seem to be following this course.

What started out as embryonic doodles about 1 inch across each, have developed into paintings many hundreds or thousands of times larger. The original sketches of charcoal and ink on primed canvas were of a linear, skeletal quality, lacking any theme but focusing on the balance of positive and negative organic shapes within the rectangular canvas. As I've continued to build on the skeleton by adding layers of paint, I've also been developing concepts for a new series of images I hope to explore. Connections are beginning to emerge between the formal images and these new concepts. It will be interesting to see if the completed pieces arrive fully joined to one of the new concepts, or if they evoke brand new ideas and themes to pursue.