Posted in Work in Progress, tagged "Adumbrate study", watercolor on January 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
So, this painting was meant as a study for a larger painting of the same subject (for which the title – ‘Adumbrate’ – just suddenly came to me):
Untitled, oil on linen, 16″ x 12″, 2008
I have the larger canvas all prepared – it is 48″ x 36″ – but it had been a while since [...]
Posted in Work in Progress, tagged "untitled/girl tree", finishing, plants on January 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
This painting is stuck right now. I want to finish it, and move my thoughts on to other paintings, very badly. But I just can’t figure out what to do to make that happen. It is a kind of failure of vision: I look and look but the forms stubbornly refuse to coalesce into resolution. [...]
Posted in Thinking Things Through, Work in Progress, tagged "Indirection", anne truitt, finishing on January 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Some years ago I worked out a nice little metaphor for the path a painting follows toward completion: an asymptote, a curving line that forever approaches tangent with the x or y axis but never gets there. The concept of the asymptote is perhaps the only fragment that remains from my career in high school [...]
Posted in Life, In & Out of the Studio, tagged anne truitt, discipline, don delillo, Studio on January 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve been thinking recently about discipline, about the number of hours I spend in the studio, and how much work I get done there – or don’t. I had always the notion that I was a pretty hard worker, but I’ve come to think that I’ve slacked off a fair bit since I got married. [...]
Posted in Thinking Things Through, tagged anne truitt, finishing on January 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I mentioned in an earlier post that I am reading the journals of the sculptor Anne Truitt. This morning I re-read a passage from Daybook which touches so directly on the difficulties of finishing a piece of work that I had to post it, given that my last post dealt with my own struggle in [...]
Posted in Work in Progress, tagged "Indirection", finishing on January 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I hadn’t worked on this painting at all in several months when my friend Jesse, who runs the Loggernaut reading series here in Portland, asked me if he could use one of my paintings for the website. I sent him over a few images and he settled on ‘Indirection’ as being the most congruent with [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art supplies, Money on January 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I haven’t been keeping on top of my studio expenses, which results in a messy stack of receipts on my desk, so I’m finally forcing myself to go through them.
Utrecht (3 diferent occasions)
Gamblin Ground 16 oz: 21.59
Utrecht Rabbit Skin Glue: 8.99
Turpenoid, gallon (2): 19.99 x 2= 39.98 (On sale from 34.99 each, nice.)
Williamsburg Quinacridone Gold [...]
Posted in Thinking Things Through, Work in Progress, tagged still life, working from life on January 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Last week, I started work on a still-life of the stolen apples, and stopped after several hours, in frustration. The set up just wasn’t quite right, the composition did not feel inevitable, and most importantly, I didn’t have that poised but relaxed feeling in my belly telling me that all was well, that I had [...]
Posted in Life, In & Out of the Studio, Thinking Things Through, tagged anne truitt, meditation on January 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
For some twenty years now I have begun each day with a period of quiet. During this time I experience a state of mind in which I am to a degree detached from my daily life. I like this feeling, and it occurs to me that I have even begun to prefer it. If a [...]
