I know I've said it before, but sometimes I go a long time between trying to paint. It didn't use to be that way, but now it is. I don't know why. In the last month or a little more, I have tried to make myself paint. Why? Why? Why make myself if I am not hearing the call to do it? Well... because I am bored and have nothing else exciting going on and I don't like just doing chores and barely anything else.
Another part of it is when I do play in my paints, I'm hardly ever pleased with how things come out anymore. It's not that I've loved everything I ever did, but at least one in every few was something that I actually liked.
For this one, it started out very different and what I started with I tried to go with, but it never got right so I went in another direction. As silly as it looks, I spent a lot of time on it, but I did have the TV going on in the background to keep me company. I kept changing and adding and adding and told myself, just be like a kid and just add whatever, wherever with no pressure for an outcome. I pretty much enjoyed myself with that concept in my head. Believe me when I tell you though, there is a LOT of paint on this canvas. I put shots of different areas of the painting for you to see up close and you can see in lots of places, some of the previous layers peaking through. Now that part I do actually like.
OK...sidebar, now for a snippet unrelated to my painting. I live alone and although I don't go around jabbering out loud ALL day, I do speak out loud to myself from time to time. It's now pretty normal for me, so here is a recent self-convo while opening a drawer while looking for something: (Me) "You wouldn't have put it in there !" (Also me) "How do you know? If you don't know where it is, how do you know you didn't put it in there?"
ha ha .... Of course, it really wasn't in there. It's true, I sometimes do both sides of the conversation !
Back to my painting. When I got it to the point it is in now (first photo), I finally announced it done for that night and started another painting. I had no idea what I was going to do with it.
So now a detour to the next painting. I will come back to the first one because I have more to say and.... because I want too. 😄
Like I said, I started the new painting with nothing in mind. It is not unusual for me to start a new canvas just putting random colors on with random designs, because it is just supposed to be an underlayer and in the end, nearly none of it will show in the final piece.
Very impressive... right??? ha ha
Sometimes the underlayer starts telling a story and gives me a direction to continue. This time..... nothing.....
Since I was already in childlike mode anyway though and it was supposed to be about the fun of the activity and not so much what the outcome would be, I decided to cover it with thick black paint and "scratch" in it, you know, like in elementary school where you colored lots of thick colors on a page and then you took a black crayon and colored over the entire page making it solid black. Afterwards, you scratched a picture through the black crayon where it would show the colors from underneath in your design. So I took the bottle of black paint and squeezed some on.
I smoothed the swirl of black all across the canvas and sides and let it sit for a few minutes and then I started scratching through the black with the tip of the handle of one of my brushes.
As you can see below I scratched around in the background for a while and of course, like usual, wasn't impressed with it. At some point I decided I would scrape off all the black as it was still soft and begin again in another direction. I took one swipe through it.... and then another, intending to do the whole surface, but after the first two swipes, this is what it looked like and I thought WAIT !.... one more small swipe and....I think it's done ! .....and it was. That seems to be all it needed, was a disapproval swipe or two for it to be completed. Admitting the piece itself did not feel like ME.... still... I knew it was done.
Funny..... right?
Now... don't get me wrong, that one is amazingly discomboobalated it is true, but like I said, that seems to be what I am producing right now. I must be in my discomboobalated era of my paintings. 🤣
I sat it over with some others I had played with and went to bed.
I always said before that I painted out of "happy". All my paintings before were just supposed to end as some sort of colorful happiness. It's not that I'm not some happy now, but I am going through a spell where my life seems more scattered and I sometimes feel like I am mentally struggling to stay on my normally happy path.
No wonder ! I decided that was what was probably going on with my paintings and I felt a gentle acceptance that the fractured work that was coming out of me was simply because it was flowing out of where I am on the inside for now.
The inside of me is not all bad or sad or torn to shreds, but it is a bit scattered. Still bits and pieces of colorful life and happiness, but too much uncertainty, to many things that need to be done or handled or decided upon and it seems to be fighting my normally happy-go-lucky laid back normal feeling of self.
When I had stopped on this the night before, I wasn't sure if I would add to it later, but once I decided it represented my current state of me, I allowed it to keep existing, just the way it was and announced to no one here, that "Scattered" would be it's name.
I look at it from the side as it reflects the light from the front window and I notice all the textures made by the underlayers and it reminds me that no matter what is on our surfaces, there is a past, a history that nearly no one ever knows all of.
As another non-related amusing snippet, I once saw an abstract piece of art... totally abstract .....and the artist had named it "Red Umbrella". It didn't have an umbrella in it, nor did it have anything red. I have to admit, it made me take pause, grin and ponder on it for a moment. The piece was an 11 X 15 and the asking price was $800.00 ! I just laughed again as I typed that. It still amuses me when I think about it.
Boy ! I was sure talkie on this one. It made me laugh again to type that. It's great when you can amuse yourself, right ?
I hope you are all doing well and that you heart is happy.
