Works in Progress, November 2011: Part Two

Today we're going to look at a few pieces I thought up until relatively recently were finished but which I'm now certain require a little more work. 

Remember this one?  I posted a video about it some time ago. You can watch it if you like, but be forewarned: it's long.  There's the silhouette of a figure standing at the end of this road.  It's currently called "Where Might This Dark Road End?"

The plan now is to replace the figure in this piece with another one from the newer, cartoony style I've been experimenting with recently.  I will also likely repaint the road itself and possibly replace the water with stones. It's unlikely I'll make a video of that, but I'll take plenty of pictures.

This one was originally not intended to be a work of art so much as a sign.  At 18" x 24", it's just slightly too large for the plastic tubs (which I call my paint troughs) in which I can safely pour and splatter large amounts of paint. 

However, there's a big ugly grey metal circuit breaker box on the wall of the apartment and this canvas is exactly the perfect size to hide it.  When I moved into this place, I put the then-blank canvas over the breaker box to cover it but wanted to- you know- paint something on it.

I have a bucket of wall paint I got from the landlord in case I need to touch up the walls, so I used that as the background for this painting.  I figured since the painting is especially meant for this particular wall, it was appropriate to make the transition as seamless as possible. In retrospect, for that reason, I should have used a 3/8" nap roller instead of a 3" sash brush, but I'm not too worried about it.

When I was a kid there were these boys that lived next door for a few years and we used to play together.  Sometimes we'd hang out in the unfinished attic over this weird old storage barn attached to their house.  The light fixture and bulb in this painting is as I remember the lights being in that space.  These crazy old-fashioned (hand-blown?) bulbs in ceramic fixtures attached to conduit pipes of some kind, jutting a few inches down from the rough-hewn wooden beams.  Obviously in this piece I chose to attach the bulb instead to a blue table.  The panel now serves as a sign marking the location of the circuit breakers- sort of a private absurdist joke.  I think I can make something more special out of it though.

In light of the recent changes I'm making in how I'm painting, I want very much to revisit this piece and really flesh it out.  There should be texture and light and the rest of whatever room that bulb is in.  I want it to be darker and dirtier and more like that weird old dusty attic space. 

Finally, this piece is the first painting I did of my friend Katie back in March.  In the following months I've almost just painted over this one a bunch of times.  There are some bits I love but for the most part, I'm just endlessly disappointed with it. 

Katie'll be leaving Massachusetts in a couple of months to go traveling and I want to complete a really good painting of her before she goes. 

Treating what's here as a blueprint of sorts, the completed painting will look very little like what you see now.  More context and more detail.  And brushstrokes.  It's funny- I've been violently opposed to brushstrokes for over a decade now and now they're becoming a necessary part of everything again.

Tomorrow, I'm going to write about a couple of works which have been in progress for quite some time. Both of these pieces were prophetic in their own ways, suggesting the changes that I would eventually make in the creative process, and each of them has a significant flaw which needs fixing.