It is probably fitting that I'm beginning my blog after just finishing a painting that I consider to be a massive disappointment. Let's face it - making art is torture most of the time. It all started out great - I was in love with the source image, my planned composition seemed intricate and interesting, and even the first layer of the painting turned out better than I expected:
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| Work in progress (by Amanda Clyne) |
The added complexity was supposed to come from a series of overlays of impastoed paint - a technique I had tried on a series of small works:
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| "Ruffled", oil on canvas, 24" x 18", Amanda Clyne |
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| "Corrupt Couture", oil on canvas, 24" x 18", Amanda Clyne |
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| "Eyeing Power", oil on canvas, 24" x 18", Amanda Clyne |
On this new work (it's 4' x 6' - pretty big), the overlays don't have the impact/effect I was hoping for.
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| Finished painting -- now in the trash heap... |
At first, the marks were all too small for the scale of the work, and it started to look too picky and fussy. I began expanding the scale of the marks and vary the speed at which they were applied, and to that extent, I'm satisfied with the result. But the final aesthetic of the work is still not at all what I thought I was working toward. Perhaps the colors are too bright (the word "fun" comes to mind - and I definitely am not striving for works that are "fun"). Perhaps there's too much color variation, which takes away from the more sophisticated palette that lies beneath. Or perhaps the character of the overlays just don't suit the character of the initial layer. Perhaps the two styles need to be more integrated - instead of the materiality of the paint sitting on top of the photographic reference so distinctly, the photographic source and the painted medium should be made to merge more seamlessly.
Also, the fragmentation in the smaller works created more complexity in the final paintings and a much deeper sense of space. While I like the different stages of the collapsing image in the new work, I think it would have been much more interesting if the three versions had been fragmented and combined in a more layered way that offered a more complex sense of space and form.
