Scraping down

Every painting session begins with scraping down, removing old paint from my palette so I can start fresh, blank. I love this ritual. I like seeing the sharp razor taking strips of paint from the glass. I like discarding the obsolete remnants from yesterday. When I approach a blank canvas, I feel a quickening in my body, from the excitement and fear of beginning again. Beginning again.

Scraping down my palette is the less terrifying practice of beginning again. It offers the freedom to be any kind of painter I want, for that day alone. I can be blue one day, and oranges the next. I can be thin as a wash or thick as paste.

I wonder what rituals other artists have, and whether they derive as much pleasure as I do with these practices.

Patience, grasshopper

I am not a patient person. If the bus GPS tells me that my ride is scheduled to arrive in 6 minutes, I wonder if I have time to get a cup of coffee.

Paradoxically, I have an inordinate amount of patience for art. I can spend hours slowly gently meticulously dabbing tiny bits of paint in a 2-inch area of canvas. I find stringing seed beads and kneading bread dough completely soothing.

Along the same vein, my favorite artists create works that unfold over time, "reward" me for sticking it out. Bill Viola is one such artist; his Passage into Night (2005, still shown above, courtesy of James Cohan Gallery, New York) is one such piece. It is melodic and mesmerizing. It also runs over 50 minutes. When I heard him speak at the Whitney in NYC, he talked a fair bit about his Buddhist practice. Even though I had been admiring him for years, and love the meditative (yet jarring) power of his installations, I had not even considered that he had a spiritual practice that directly informs his work. (I can be a little dense sometimes.)

Of course, powerful art comes from personal, passionate places.

It also arrives from patience, with the work, with oneself. I am writing this as a reminder note to myself, as anxiety builds because I've been away from my studio for almost 3 weeks.

Sunshine

"So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song." 

-Zora Neale Hurston, from Their Eyes Were Watching God

An open letter to my Muse

Henri Matisse. Dance (I). (1909) Oil on canvas, 12' x 8'. Image from MoMA.

Oh, my elusive friend, where have you been? There is so much I want to say to you, or rather, to myself through you.

Painting feels difficult today. I've spent too many hours in this small space with little ventilation. This might be a metaphor, but it's also literal. I've reworked a canvas in a new direction but it feels far from complete. It is getting there ... but I still see many problems. I need a break so I can approach it fairly, not just by the legacy frustration I feel now. Some paintings come so easily. Others take weeks of toiling, repainting, scraping down, covering, reworking, refocusing.

I want you. Here. Now. I've had a taste of what you bring and I want more. I want to talk and share and laugh and disagree. I want to understand how you came to be, where you've been, and where you want to go. I want to understand where I fit in, what you think of our interaction.

I'm painting a lot, so I know you are here somehow. I have a lot of good days but also many bad hours of struggling. Some days, like today, I cannot get the colors mixed. I made seafoam when instead I wanted pale, pale cerulean, almost the color of a translucent sky behind dissipating fog.

I understand your reluctance to be here completely. Are you looking from afar? What do you see? Would it match what you already know?

The idea of you sustains me, pushes me forward to express and create. For that alone, I am grateful.