With crits over and the semester coming to an end and I can't help but retreat into the dim light of my apartment to mull of the many questions (new and old) I have about painting.
The window in my bedroom faces the base of a large tree. The roots snake out and down into the rich wet earth beneath them, the ground beset with the fallen leaves and the debris of many seasons. Behind the tree there is a chain link fence and a pale yellow house beyond it. I see the sky in patches looking up, the leaves of the tree above covering it like the shapes of countries over seas on a map. At night, like it is now, the leaves turn a dark mossy green in the orange security light. They darken and cool toward center, their shadows laying like expressionist brushstrokes across the low house siding.
The studio feels unsettled to me right now, paintings and projects scattered about, stacks leaning against the walls in various states of finish. The still life set up for my latest portrait painting covers most of the floor space on the right side of the room. The long table has a yellow cloth on it with two mock Japanese lantern style lamps, three or four bottles of wine, a spilled wine glass (which my friend actually spilled while sitting), two cakes and a clear glass bong and light green smoking pipe.
A close friend, Drake, is sitting for me. We have had one session together so far and the painting is still in a sketchy state, drawing lines exist in many places. I am using a set up and pose similar to that of the Carvaggio painting
The Young Bacchus. Drake is in a place in his life right now where he has just graduated school and is still working and living in Bloomington. He is not sure what the next stage of his life is yet. He is happy with the moment. He lives life with an eye open to possibilities but no plan of the future. The still life around him reflects the habits we have and the things we use to have a good time.
While I am approaching this painting with somewhat of a sense of humor I don't want it to be a complete bastardization of its visual source of inspiration. I am interested in the idea of a Dionysian view toward life and how youth is related to that. The freedom of a certain age. The allowance of chaos and structure to exist alongside each other.
I do not know where I am going from here. I have new ideas for paintings and a desire to start working on them. But I can't shake my vexations about painting in general. I decided to paint entirely from life this semester, I desired more than anything to spend time with people and paint them. Taking watercolor with Tim also made painting other places and temporal situations a new possibility for me. It has also been helpful in teaching me more about color and cultivating a closer eye for the world around me. I have come to love looking at things and deconstructing them in a painting language. I hope to continue using watercolors and have plans to paint in the basement of my work sometime before or during break. I want to start using oil paints at my apartment and other places that I find interesting and can set up regularly. So then...
My vexations? My questions? All of these concerns swirling around in my head?
Am I doing enough? Is this recent interest in the immediate world around me important enough to be my continuing body of work? How can I get previous interests such as gender and religion back into my paintings working in this new way? Should every painting be led by an idea? What are ideas? What does it mean to be a painter painting representational spaces with people today?
Caleb said something in my critique that I am holding on to. I wanted to capture the identity of my sitters - of this time in their lives, of their existence. He didn't see it. He saw that I struggled to paint these people. He saw the image in the paintings, the representation of a person with paint. But I don't care about the image if it isn't getting to the truth I am seeking.
Everyone congratulated me on the critique going well and it mostly did. But I can't get over what might not have been there. I don't want my paintings to be purely formal. I don't want people to see them and their opinions to rest on the surface. Barry said that he thought the paintings had to get richer, that I owed it to myself. He asked me if I feel any responsibility being a contemporary figure painter. I guess I believe that if I have any responsibility it is to be true to how people are. I sought to do portraits because I found the nature of them to be quite complex. Working only with what someone gives you physically to try and express a multitude of layers within that single image. But I am beginning to realize that maybe the paintings weren't complex enough, that maybe the tableau of a portrait could be limiting.
I still want to paint people. I need to avoid the distance which paid models add. I am not interested in that level of anonymity in my work. But I think I need to open up to the paintings (compositionally, structurally) more and explore the possibilities of what they could be separate from their subjects.
Really, I just need to paint and I am spending all this time ruminating. If anyone has any thoughts, concerns, annoyances etc. PLEASE share them.
