Step 1: About a year ago I started doing something totally different from what I'd been used to - instead of working these medium size canvas' and doing what felt safe I started aplying a second layer, almost another ground, to my already Gesso'd canvas or plain masonite. Instead of going in with an idea I began doing something that's changed the way I work and it's made my mind work in a more relaxed manner - before I do anything else, I put down wide strokes and swaths of black paint. Just mash it around. Huge sweeping motions - no plans, no direction(s), no intent - just mindless swipes at the surface. And then hit a few spots with a second coat - not too many though...not enough to make it feel finished and constructed.
Step 2:. The I add big bold spray paint lines and circles - again, no plan, no direction, no intent. Just sweeps of color.
Step 3: Throw on more black paint - splatter it. Splatter!
Step 4: I draw in the subject, if there is one, with chalk or colored pencil, sometimes I add color with acrylic paint marker if I feel like it and then I add acrylic colors that make me happy - not "appropriate" colors, just colors that I like at that moment.
Step 5: Follow all that with text - if there is any and.....WHALLAH! Whith that I have a surface I want to start with: a messed up, mind Fk of a puzzle that is going to take a major LACK of concentration to figure out. It's a puzzle but instead of staring at it intently and rubbing my chin adn tryin' real hard to figure out the puzzle, I tend to just forget what I'm doing, relax, put on NPR or a movie and let my mind drift....it's in that like meditation that I accept the mess and turn it around - I find the places inbetween the messy strokes that I find the pattern that allows the intended image to arrive. My work is....an anti puzzzle puzzle that I don't puzzle over, I let the puzzle unpuzzle itself infront of me. It sounds puzzling. my work is....layers of and textures that I build up and then just ignore to find the basis for the real intended image of the work.
Here's pics of the two I'll be working on:
This is canvas, 5' x 4', is set up for to do a work based on this photo:
I love the dress and know what I'm going to do,,,very exciting.
And these:
This 3' x 5' canvas, is the start of "Dysfunctional objects" and will have a middle aged man's head on a dolls body - I'm particularly excited about the hands. I want something smooth and chubby like Palmolive hands but a bit meatier.
So, as you can see - they're puzzles. I love puzzles.
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