Works in Progress, November 2011: Part Three

Today, I want to show you a couple of pieces that have been in progress for quite some time.

This painting was the first one in which I experimented with superimposing a cartoony figure on a poured background.  I posted about this piece way back in March and at that time it was a few months old already. In all the time since then, all I've done to it is paint that little guy red.  I've been otherwise stuck and only recently realized why.


I made a significant error.  My approach was all wrong.  What I've found works really well is to paint my background and then do a ton of sketches incorporating a figure over some element of the existing painting.  Then when it's time to paint it in my hand knows the shapes I want instinctively and the figure can grow organically as both a part of its environment and very much its own unique self.  What I did with this piece instead was to refer to photo, project it on the canvas, and then draw the figure (with some obvious edits- this was a photo of a baby swimming underwater and I painted him as a one-eyed robot) for the very first time on the canvas itself. 

This was a mistake for two reasons:  First, I never got a chance to get to know the character before I tried to introduce him to his environment.  Second, the fact of its superimposition, as opposed to a more desirable incorporation, becomes entirely inescapable.  It looks like he was slapped on after the fact because he was.

So the plan at the moment is to treat the existing character as an element of the background and invent a new figure designed both to cover up the baby-bot and to fit more naturally into his world.  Additionally, I intend to add a second figure emerging from the lower left-hand corner.  Aside from a general sense of the relative weight and placement of each figure I honestly have no idea what either of these guys are about or what their relationship is to each other.  But that will come.

This next one gets me all excited.  I think this painting has more than any other heralded the changes that were about to occur in my style, not only in how it's developing stylistically and materially, but also in its theme. 

The figure there may or may not remain skeletal.  His looking that way at this point is more architectural than anything else.  He's standing someplace dark and foreboding, peeling back the very fabric of his reality somehow to reveal what will be a bright, pastoral landscape at sunrise.  This piece therefore not only marks a significant change in how I was approaching the work but is about the idea of significant change, initiated by the individual. 

It's actually sort of annoying when my paintings are smarter than I am.

At any rate, I'm looking forward to finishing this painting.  There are a couple other pieces I'm more actively engaged in right now (which I'm going to show you on Friday) and which are taking up my painting time, but once those are finished, this one's likely next on the list. 

There's a pretty big mistake in this one too though.  See that weird wavy white line leading away from the figure through the field of darkness, receding off the panel on the left side?  Yeah.  That shouldn't be there.  I have a plan for it, but I would much rather if the background weren't besmeared by it.  Unfortunately the nature of my process precludes the possibility of recreating the background texture over the line, so I'll be making a new piece of ground for the figure to be standing on. 

Tomorrow, I'm going to show you four paintings which are still so young that I have literally no idea what direction they'll take.  Until then, I leave you with a thought: what percentage, do you think, of the matter in the universe is formed into beings which can think?  How rare and unlikely and amazing you are!