Painting Again

Pink Toothbrush, oil on panel, 4.5 x 9 inches

Started some new still-life paintings. The last ones were miniature paintings of candy and little cakes; now I've started paintings of mints, hersheys kisses, and toothbrushes. Strangely, these things all work together. They're things for the mouth, hygiene as well as intimacy, assuming the hersheys kiss is the stand-in for the real thing. The colors are the male-female colors, pink/red and blue/green. Its the second real day of painting. I roughly laid out several small panels and will go back into them when they dry.

On a technical level, the question is always how far to push them? In the early stages, sometimes just after a minute of painting, I can have a really beautiful but really rough painting. No detail, just raw outlines and forms. As the hours go by I chisel away the rough edges and adding detail, softness, harmony. If I push it too far I lose all of the original storm, but leave it too quickly and it's not elegant enough. It's a tough balance. If I make it too refined, I will actually come back in and destroy it a little, start over. Knowing when to stop, that's the hardest thing.

The other problem I'm working out is the surface itself. My panel paintings are either on Ampersand brand boards, which are coated with a really absorbent clay mixture, or on panels I make using birch plywood coated with a traditional gesso recipe (rabbit-skin glue, zinc white powder, and ground chalk). Both of these surfaces are extremely absorbent, which means they suck in the oil of the first layer very quickly, allowing me to repaint a second and third coat in one sitting. The problem is it also seems to darken the colors as they dry, so I have to wait until the painting is dry and then repaint the lighter colors. There can also be problems of the paint layers adhering to each other.

Most painters today use acrylic gesso, which isn't nearly as absorbent, the paint stays wet on the surface and you have to paint wet into wet, I don't like this as much. I'm planning to experiment with some new surfaces soon...maybe acrylic gesso mixed with ground chalk, or the chalk sealed with linseed oil...somewhere between very absorbent and very slick would be ideal.

On cleaning

I cleaned my studio this evening -- gave it a good, thorough, deep-clean. Put away piles of materials, matboards, stretcher bars, jars of half-used turpentine. Scrubbed the wood floors on my hands and knees, wiped the dust off tables, thinned the bookshelves of old reading, threw out unwanted materials, tested a new brush cleaner on some stiff brushes. It feels good to clean. This time I did it slowly, without rushing. I'm trying not to rush so much. Life is better when you go slow, but going slow is very difficult.

I haven't painted much since my show opened a few weeks ago. Putting up a show is exhausting, and afterwards I need time off. I worked on my construction job, I spent time with family and friends, I went out a lot. And I met a girl. There was a new girl in my life for two weeks, I liked her, and then yesterday that short chapter ended. Cleaning really feels good. The critics say it's procrastinating, something to make you feel good about not doing your real work, but I think cleaning is part of my real work. Cleaning is the preparation, the first step in the process. Clean and clear the room so you can clear and calm the mind, to prepare for making new work. Cleaning is also good when things end. Maybe what I mean is, cleaning is the thing in between, the bridge between the old and the new.

I'm ready to get back to painting. I have some ideas, but I don't want to jinx them. Not a big idea, but many little ideas. I'll start with the little ones and go from there. I'm taking a break from birds and water and wetlands, going back to another direction.