Of the six canvases begun in July of last year (2009), four are finished. One of them is awful; the other two are unfinished, and these three most likely will have to be destroyed. Those stretchers can be re-used. Though the paintings could be largely an exercise in failure, the process of painting these pieces was beneficial for several reasons.
Because the oil paint takes time to dry, I could only apply one layer of paint every other day (months and months of layering), and so there was a constant theme of interruption. These interruptions meant that every day, when I stepped into the studio and approached the paintings, I had to engage with them again, almost as though for the first time, never knowing how they might look in the end. Each decision had to be carefully weighed in the moment, as every line and every color would change the piece entirely, and there could be no planning ahead. Some moves seemed obvious, and others were absolutely gambles (though the results of a gamble may not be immediately favorable, they sometimes work out to be wonderful moves in the direction of the painting, and then some just seem to ruin everything). I suppose that if I were to work on these paintings forever, they would all eventually constitute satisfactory finished pieces. Maybe I will...
In any case, this perpetual re-engagement demands a very present awareness and focus in the moments of decision making because nothing is assured, and nothing is planned. It seems that the reason for the two unfinished (perhaps failed) paintings is that they actually entered the game late (because I ran out of canvas while stretching all six and had to buy more to cover the last two largest stretchers), and I had to re-trace some steps to bring them up to date with the paintings that were begun earlier. This revisiting of bygone decisions was too dead to be interesting, and I guess that that is the difference between art that is new and alive, and art that is boring and dead. Someone should start a campaign against zombie art, because it is out there, and it is eating brains!
A visitor to my website asked, "I was wondering if someone were to follow your grid drawing formulae (instructions) precisely, would they end up with the same design as you, or would another end-product be possible (or likely) because of how the formula is interpreted?" And that is a question I have encountered more than once, both in and out of my own mind.
