- Yesterday I worked on a painting with the idea of childhood in mind. Painting from a place of childhood memory and space. This is something that I have not done in a while, I have somewhat avoided the subject of childhood entirely... As I exclusively painted from this place for so long...somehow I just thought the subject was done and over with for me. Yet in the last few months, though I have felt confident in the moment of working on my paintings, in the same moment I could feel very distant and unconvinced of the subject matter itself. So in challenging my growth and attempting to pay attention to the things that I love about the way of painting, I have been scheduling painting time in every day. I know, well,?? isn't this what we should be doing every day? Well, yes, and i am guilty of painting in my head more that actualizing it on canvas. So when someone asks if I am working, well of course I am. I am always working, always painting, always thinking of my images and of my icons. This week as I painted, my critical mind kept on going crazy with rules about what I can or should and should not do in my work. A funny thing happened in this place of awareness. I realized that in an attempt to capture the feelings of a childhood space, I found myself painting in beautiful gelato tones of pinks, yellows, and deep maroons, and just as I began to enjoy it I found myself resisting the tones, my brush movement, my paint. I became frustrated, and disconnected. My mind was placing rules on the use of color, it kept on telling me "no, no, these are not your colors, these colors are Christina's, you don't use these, not like this"
I disregarded my critic voice and thoroughly enjoyed using "Christina's colors". A lovely palette to work with indeed.
For me I find requiring myself to be not only in the studio but also working for x hours at a time really helpful. I'm curious about your previous work that was about childhood. Your post made me think about the idea of difficulty...as in the level of fun, ease, grace even, versus hard work, tenacity, that an activity like painting should entail, or any art for that matter. -MW
ReplyDeleteOooh... yeah. I think that is a good point. How do you reconcile "keeping a good working schedule" and the process of creativity. Two things for me... the mindless busywork of building canvases and having a similar playlist on my ipod sometimes help bring me back to the mindfullness that surpasses difficulty and mostly ignores or rather works objectively against the negative thoughts of perceived incompetence. It is what it is. I suppose this is more of a rant than a comment.
ReplyDeleteAlso.. Im honored I could be thought to lord over a particular palette... even for a moment... And thankful that I can be constantly inspired within our group.-xtina