A Different Work Flow

This past weekend I decided to try working on a few canvases at the same time to see if this could help keep me focused in my studio. My general tendency is to work on one piece at a time, not counting prep and finish which is always ongoing. But prep work and finish work are so mechanical, those processes don't shift my mind from a creative quandary and sometimes I need that. My theory is that this shift could keep me thinking creatively even though I’ve hit a sticking point. When get "stuck" on a piece, my tendency is to shift to the more basic set of tasks and if that’s not enough I have even been known to resort to housework. But mostly when I get stuck I just watch TV, run errands, go shopping, talk to friends, and that is not productive.

So I found that I actually spent more time in the studio, even though I do not have a finished painting to show for it. It’s a different way of working for me so I may just have to get used to it. Anyway, I have three paintings in progress, all 24” squares, which I worked on in between getting my Guild Sourcebook artwork finished, packing up a painting and working on redesigning my website. So I feel I had a very productive weekend.

Painting 1 has subsequently been nearly ruined in my last painting session on it, not sure if I’m going to do a complete paint-over or if when I return to it this evening I get a flash of an idea for a salvage. In any event, I didn’t take a photo of it in its depleted state, I’ll wait to see what happens. Painting 2 has turned out to be a bit of a weird color combination but I like what’s happening with the circles. The third painting could technically qualify as being in the prep phase, but what I have found with my new approach to the Reclamation series is that the creative process is actively engaged in that phase as I have to figure out the layout, experiment with the arrangement of the materials for the assemblage, finalize areas to be masked and plan for the gauged-out lines.


Painting 3, in the early phases of planning the assemblage: