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Saturday, July 3, 2010

What's Next?

IN THE STUDIO

Pentyck canvases four and five are on the easel, works in progress. All the edges have been painted on units one, two and three. And the little abstract you see below came about from wiping my brushes to get the excess paint off to refine the stroke. Those abstracts are the most fun; they just happen for better or worse.







I love starting paintings--there's such promise. Then you get into them and compositional balance issues pop up, color value decisions have to be made and the big question becomes when is it finished?

In the past when I dabbled, (and perhaps the reason I only dabbled),I was never quite sure. I always felt there was one more mark to be made that would make it perfect. I've changed my mind since. I've gotten a bit older, had a brush with the big C and time is precious. I've decided: a painting is done when I don't want to paint it anymore. That's that. No Barnett Newman quandaries for me.

The minimalist/abstract expressionist/field painter, (no body knew how to classify Barney), painted a huge fields of color with thin stripes of other colors spaced across the canvas. A red Newman painting, takes up one whole wall in the DIA and, as the story goes, took him ten years to finish--I quess he couldn't decide where to put the stripes? I think he should have left them out. Like mom said: If you can't decide what to do, don't do anything at all. But the painting probably plagued Barney. For a decade he kept thinking, "You know, It still needs a little something..."

Well if he wanted to create a sense of depth, sure. The stripes of color did that; But what took him so long? And why did he care where and what color? Most of the average joes going through that gallery haven't a clue about the significance of those stripes or his paintings They stand there whispering to their mates, "Hell, I could have painted that myself Hon."

I don't know why I'm thinking about the Abstract minimalistic field painters and picking on Barney. Maybe I'm thinking my art could stand some simplification? But I do love colors all mixed up.

I need a title for my pentyck. So far I've thought of: 1)Closet Art,(the vertical arrangements of colors and patterns in my closet inspired the painting); 2) You Can't have too Many, (which is something I believe to be true about shirts and tops. And the idea of painting them in a multiple unit painting...); 3) Black Pants and A shirt,(my fashion style and the reason I have a collection of tops). I think I like number 1 but I'm open to any ideas?

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