A New Process

A while back, I talked about how the creative process can be a destructive one also - after all, thats how nature works, nothing lasts forever. Everything is eventually broken down and re-structured or re-made into something new. It might take millions of years, it might take minutes, but it happens every day, all around us. I started rubbing down canvases to try to re-cycle them and re-use them. This caused x2 problems:

1. Holes. If you rub a canvas with sandpaper for enough time, you will get holes in it. As the paint surface makes it uneven, holes appear randomly and without warning. You also have to be careful of the stretcher bars, they mark the canvas and where you rub and also can make it difficult to sand edges around the stretcher bars.  You can take the canvas off the stretcher bars however (apart from taking forever) it doesn't help that much and holes still appear around the edges where the stretcher bars were.

2. Dust. There is so much dust. Son of dust. You MUST wear a mask for this work, a decent one. Mask + eye glasses = FAIL. My glasses fell off consistently, into the dust. The dust then gets in your eyes, your hair, your clothes, your dog. 

I am not sure what the correct protective equipment for this work is but I am confident that it is completely out of proportion with the money saved from re-cycling a canvas. Therefore, sandpaper and canvas should only be brought together on the rare occasion that you want to actually use that look in one of your paintings. 

I must admit, I am a fan of this worn, aged look. we saw a lot of it while we were in India, in fact we stayed in an old palace and in our bedroom were beautiful old frescos, damaged by the years and the weather. When I started rubbing down my canvases, this is what I thought of, it reminded me of these scenes. How wonderful to try and cause this effect. I knew I wanted to give it a go.

With my India project, to start with, I approached it with my usual style. For some reason, with some of the pieces, it just wouldn't work. The painting looked flat and solid. I started experimenting with different styles and techniques on different paintings. It was amazing to 'have a go' at something new. If it didn't work, meh... what you learn during that experiment is useful information. Nothing is ever a 'wasted project' as you always get something out of it, even if it is something small. And what you might end up discovering, is worth the risk. 

One particular piece that kept bugging me was this water piece. We had gone for afternoon tea at this amazing house. It was for rent during the season (4 rooms and staff - I'd highly recommend it!) but we had gone there as we were staying at the sister hotel (the old palace with the frescos!) just for tea. It used to be the Maharaja's pleasure palace, built so he could hunt and enjoy the high life with his hareem. It sits in the fork of a lazy river, so lazy it looks almost stagnant, with long ropes of weed laying over the surface of it. It was sunset and the end of the monsoon season, so there was still a lot of humidity in the air and the heat, even at sunset, was pretty immense. It was very quiet, although locals were still going about their business, mainly shepherds, moving  their goats around and women washing clothes in the river. It was beautiful, so peaceful and serene, but wet and hot. 

This painting was not coming together, it just wasn't conveying how I felt looking over the rooftop of the old pleasure palace out to the riverbank. I kept leaving it and going back to it, hoping something would explode out of my palette knife and make it work all of a sudden. It wouldn't and I would leave it for another couple of weeks...months...

I felt like I was going over old ground again and again, just re-doing what I had already done. The colours were right, but at the same time, not right. I wasn't proud of what I had done at the end of each session and that always hurts. The paint layers were building up but nothing new was happening. I was getting frustrated as I knew the piece would work, I just didn't know how to execute it. Maybe thats the bonus of Art school, you learn things like that. Its less trial and error and more people to bounce ideas off. Me in a studio on my own, getting frustrated wasn't helping move the piece along. 

I was actually surfing online and came across this very talented artist Jessica Zoob (www.jessicazoob.com). Her paintings are like dreamscapes and I love how she uses glazes and colours. She says how she likes to scrape back and layer up the paint which got me thinking about my own work and my earlier experiments. I decided I would give it another go and see if I could turn this around in a new way, using techniques I hadn't used before and shrugging off my usual style, just let what happens, happen. 

I started by sanding off some of the layers of the paint that were already on the canvas (don't worry, I used all my protective equipment) which gave me that 'fresco' feel and evened up the paint layer a bit. It also took away some of the paint I had built up in frustration. After wiping a good deal of dust from the work, I decided on a palette and started to glaze. A glaze is where you mix a semi or transparent colour with an oil medium and paint it over another colour. It makes the paint runny and translucent. I decided to keep it 'loose' and allow the colours to run into each other. A complete departure from my structured work, with stiff, buttery oil paint.

As I went on, the paint found its way onto the canvas in its own way and I couldn't help but love the result. It started to feel right, to convey the damp heat just after sunset. I am not sure I have finished it just yet, I may sand back a layer once more and re-glaze for extra depth but I am already so so pleased with how it looks and feels. 

I have resolved to do more of this 'departure' work. Loosening up the paint and making the landscapes I paint much more abstract. I in fact, started on a snowy mountain version. This one is from scratch so it might have a different vibe to it than the India piece, and probably less structure, but I feel more relaxed about where it might go now and kind of excited to see where it takes me!