Moved



I moved to my new studio and living space last Tuesday. The unpacking isn’t done yet. Back at the previous apartment not much got weeded out, it just got put in boxes. So here it all is, questionably interesting or valuable, offering one opportunity after another to make a decision. Keep, recycle, landfill. If I keep it, where does it go?

Back to working on paintings. I repainted the part of the sleeve that I mentioned in my previous blog post. But when I was working on it the other day, here at the new place, the work did not have that heightened-awareness 'key to the painting' feeling. At the time of my previous blog post I was imagining a work session in which, if I got the color shape for the area on the sleeve very well designed, it would spark the painting to life, and I'd be done, or close to it.

Since painting is not a time-based art form, it isn't clear which part of a painting was painted last when you first look at it. Seeing it come together would have been an experience for me to enjoy in the studio. But as I was working the other day I didn’t see, remember, or imagine it in heightened terms, I just did it. The painting improved somewhat, and I moved on to something else.

Over the course of a few days the painting took a slightly different path, from the one I was imagining last week. There are so many paths that a painting can take. Some other good things happened that I didn’t even think about before. Softening an unpleasant edge I had almost resigned myself to living with, by successfully managing the acrylic paint’s value shift when the water dried, was key to one of the areas. Repainting a shadow area four times in about five minutes, with some gummy acrylic sanding in between layers, also helped.

I was trained to sand a lot during the process of oil painting, and I have adapted this to use with acrylics. The latter paint does not sand well, pieces of the paint film can ball up in a sticky, gummy way. It doesn't come off cleanly like oil paint. But sanding does still reduce the layer of paint on the surface of the canvas, and it roughs it up, which I like.

In my work in my new studio areas avoided got opened up, and now the painting looks more relaxed and expansive than I had previously considered an option. Now there are other issues to address, which I will do my best to do before the three paintings are installed next Tuesday. 

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