The last week or so has been all about reassessing the paintings of the summer and understanding my dissatisfaction with them - analyzing, questioning, reasoning - but in the last few days it has been all about the paint again, and I just love it. The simpler compositions I'm working with require me to explore much more subtlety in the surface; I'm taking more risks with the color, and not painting the surface as sheerly as I have been; and now I'm allowing the paint texture and brush strokes to reveal themselves too. My natural touch with the brush is quite gentle, so the paint-handling has a really sensual, feminine look that I'm actually quite happy with.
I've also added a new color to my palette - Manganese Blue - which looks like it has light embedded in the pigment. It's infused the painting with a type of brightness that my other oil paintings don't have. It's made me want to explore some other new pigments that give this sense of light - although I do find the contemporary palette can get too attached to the screen-aesthetic and lose the richness of some of the more traditional colors. Pthalo-based (and other synthetic) colors can easily overwhelm a painting. But in moderation, it could help me to re-invent the historical types of images I use with a slightly sexier edge than my past works.
With all the emphasis on conceptual matters in art now, it's often too easy to lose focus on the magic offered in the materials. I still have a lot to learn about oil paint, and I've only begun to figure out what I can make it do, but I just have to remind myself to not get so wrapped up in the ideas and the image for the work that the importance and relevance of the paint itself gets lost. I see my work almost as a defense of painting - that the translation of these digital/photographed images into paint changes their meaning, changes the viewer's reception of the work - which means I need to make sure that the paint in my work is speaking as loudly as the composition, the ideas and the image. In fact, that probably describes all the paintings I love - when the paint itself is not just a tool of expression, but is an undeniable part of the message.
I've also added a new color to my palette - Manganese Blue - which looks like it has light embedded in the pigment. It's infused the painting with a type of brightness that my other oil paintings don't have. It's made me want to explore some other new pigments that give this sense of light - although I do find the contemporary palette can get too attached to the screen-aesthetic and lose the richness of some of the more traditional colors. Pthalo-based (and other synthetic) colors can easily overwhelm a painting. But in moderation, it could help me to re-invent the historical types of images I use with a slightly sexier edge than my past works.
With all the emphasis on conceptual matters in art now, it's often too easy to lose focus on the magic offered in the materials. I still have a lot to learn about oil paint, and I've only begun to figure out what I can make it do, but I just have to remind myself to not get so wrapped up in the ideas and the image for the work that the importance and relevance of the paint itself gets lost. I see my work almost as a defense of painting - that the translation of these digital/photographed images into paint changes their meaning, changes the viewer's reception of the work - which means I need to make sure that the paint in my work is speaking as loudly as the composition, the ideas and the image. In fact, that probably describes all the paintings I love - when the paint itself is not just a tool of expression, but is an undeniable part of the message.