PAINTING AGAIN
DURING & BEYOND COVID (2021 - 2024)
In 2007, recorded in an earlier page ("I Quit") on this site, painting --- my primary creative means for ½ century --- had done all I needed from it. The works weren't made with paint except for small portraits that I didn't exhibit but were done as a hand/eye exercise and as gifts. When COVID struck, we paid attention to the "rules," and spent months in isolation, avoiding being around many people and attending public events. But the creative impulses never left; the media changed. The art merely changed to more conceptual constructions or to new essays or to organizing old writings (for the grand children, you know, who'll probably never read them).
Two more "books" came out (see pages on Exhibition X and In the Shade of a Dead Palm), and I did several conceptual/other works (to be shown eventually), but one day in 2022 I said out loud, in front of my husband Ray (aka Mister Man) these fateful words: "I think I'll start painting again." Before I knew it, he'd built four stretchers, complete with canvas, and each was 48" x 36".
The results are paintings of and from my photographs, without intentional content --- although the stairs and doors suggested themes as I worked ---, requiring me to paint in a totally new way, or perhaps in a quite old one, like 2-d design lessons I taught ½ century ago. Yes, I use favorite photos I have taken, and yes, I am painting PICTURES. No, I don't enlarge, project, or divide the compositions prior to painting; I use lots of tape and rulers; I measure and draw/tape straight lines. And, though the results have changed since 2022, sometimes getting looser and a bit more painterly, they all do, to varying degrees, what I hope they will: look almost photo-real from a few feet, then disclose the looseness and invented patterns on close view.
"2021," 2022, acrylic, 48" x 36"
The original photograph, enlarged for my eye-to-hand examination, had a door with a white metal palm tree and the beautiful blue sky in all its negative spaces. But remember, it was 2021, and that was a tough, tough year. So I painted the "doorway," the "entrance " or "exit" solid black to represent my world view, attitude, despondency, whatever you want to call it. It's hardly a happy painting. BUT: if I were still around students, I'd give them a small copy and ask them to count the triangles. I think I will, too, and we can compare.
"TWIST," 2022, acrylic, 48" x 36"
Each of these paintings, done from beginning to 90%-or-so complete, gave me ideas about how to approach the one to follow. My intention, as stated earlier, was --- particularly in this composition --- to make shapes as simple and as flat as possible while suggesting as much depth as possible. There are quite a few compositions within the overall one, and, once again, plenty of triangles. And squares, rectangles, etc.
"PENTHOUSE," 2023, acrylic, 48" x 36"
Oddly, I have nothing to say about this image. As a small photograph, I simply "liked" it: anything with the basics of red, yellow, blue, black, white and gray, grab my attention. I particularly like discovering its small and gestures of paint that, from a short distance, "read" as detailed.
"TO THE BLUES," 2023, acrylic, 48" x 36"
Just another likable photograph, with it complex shadows and projections, demanded I give it a lot of looking and simplifying without losing its physical/compositional "content." There is no other content or meaning (unless I discover and invent one during the painting process).
"SCHRODINGER'S DOOR," 2024, acrylic, 48" x 36"
Again, I would describe this as having no overt content, and yet... so many of my photographs include stairways, doors, and/or windows: openings and barriers, that sort of thing. As for this one --- a location in Mexico I walked by and photographed nearly every day ---, as I worked, I kept thinking about the door: is it opening (please!) or closing? A future painting may answer this one...
"MINE IS THE MORNING", 2024, acrylic, 48" x 36"
Original photo by Marcia McCoy, with her permission
A dear friend posted a photo of/similar to this scene, and when I asked to use it, she gave me total permission; thank you, Marcia! The painting process taught me so many things --- as each one of these backward-looking ones have done --- about underpainting and then taping and adding another color and then taping... and then... and then... It was a challenge and the result isn't true to the original photograph, but at some point, I found myself saying: whew, enough! (Many people see the blue shape outside the door as water, but it's actually a photo of a blue wall. No matter.)