It’s been a productive Canada Day weekend. Four days in my studio! The first intensive stretch of time I have had since my house has been under reconstruction. (They are not finished yet because of the endless rains we have been having. Three times the usual amount in June!) Because of the long weekend, no carpenters were here so I was a happy painter!
Friday D. came out to help with the preliminaries. I had primed about ten canvases of all sizes. We glued pieces of (silk-screened images on) canvas and fabric onto the stretched canvases. I really enjoy her curiosity. At one point, she asked me what I think about when I am choosing pieces to glue onto the canvas. I, in my usual terse way, said “Nothing.” But she persisted, saying, from what she knows about design principles, I am definitely thinking about something. Because even before putting paint to the canvases, they look right (a right mixture of balance and tension). So, I must admit, I do think about things. I think about what the bare canvas looks like as it is filling up with pieces of images and various shapes. And I think about what it might look like with these pieces and shapes underneath a layer (or three or four or more) of paint. So there is some foresight involved at every step of the way. I do know what I like to have happen, ultimately, so I put things down that will most likely lead in that direction. What I don’t know is how it will end up: what will stay and what will be buried. And the process is very intuitive. There is no script.
D. had wanted to come watch me paint from the very beginning of the process to the end, to see how I work. But I couldn’t do it. The first steps I go through, when starting a painting, are just too personal to share with anyone. What I put down with paint at the beginning is for no one but me. Along with putting down some colors and possibly drawing some images, I write what I am feeling at the moment, words that come from the images, from things I am thinking. Random thoughts and feelings. I do not censor or challenge them. I don't make them nice if they don't want to be that. It forms, for me, a very personal relationship with the canvas. It’s my secrets revealed, but only to the canvas itself. From there, I transform this intimate beginning into something that is not me, not mine.
Of course, the carpenters are coming again tomorrow and they walk through my studio to get things they need to store there (there really is no other safe place for their tools) so I have to place the canvases with their faces to the wall. I hope they (the paintings) don’t mind. It will just be for the next few days. By the weekend, when the carpenters will not be here, I will have some time to release them. Then, perhaps, I will be ready for D. to see what I am doing.
.
Leya, you collage silkscreen images into your canvases? Oh my gosh, I can't believe that, I had no idea! You started off in print making didn't you? I think I remember that! That is the exact direction I foresee my own paintings going, in the future, when I no longer have to paint in my kitchen! Well isn't that interesting!
It would be cool to watch you paint, but oh my gosh - ha! If anyone was to watch me paint, I would be so aware of their presence, no I can't imagine. I have to be completely alone, or I swear that person would end up somehow in my painting. But I have to agree with your friend's interest, your process facinates me as well.
Posted by: Jackie at July 3, 2006 10:05 PM