Kazillions of Choices

Tight, Loose and Deliberate

It was about this time I started to hear other painters talking about being too ‘tight’ and wanting to ‘loosen up’. “What do you mean?” I asked. The only answer I would get was, “I just want to be looser!”.

I pondered this. Does it mean folks are compelled to draw and paint in restrictive brush strokes? Or render exactly what they are seeing? Or focusing too much on detail? Or is what they create not what they want it to look like? Or?

For my journey, I had to tighten up tending to be an all out ‘emoter’. Having a desire to share something, I would brush paint onto the paper. But the outcome came no where near to capturing what I intended. It was more than likely to be mis formed and muddy. And so I went down the path of working to be able to draw what I saw and paint what I wanted to share. As I gained knowledge which in turn increased my ability to see, work got tighter more detailed, more exact. This then became unsatisfying for though a decent study was rendered, it did not capture the feeling I wished to convey. I played. A little more of this, a little less of that. A brush stroke this way a brush stroke that way. Oh so many choices to say the same thing! But, I started to recognize how the painter can be deliberate and loose, as well as detailed with grace. That with knowledge and practice loose deliberate marks detailed the questioning eye, the waving branch or the turning wave. But with knowledge came another dilemma. There are so many choices to achieve the vision for a piece. If Cobalt is used instead of Ultramarine the mixture has a different quality. The brush applied at an oblique angle makes a completely different mark than if pulled straight down. When executing a painting there are kajillions of choices one can make, it can be over whelming but also intoxicating! For one choice means the painting will forever be different than it might have been should I have made a different choice!

This was a study. I kept the realism deciding instead to alter the content not the depiction. I added a cat would it tip the lute?

This then is the conundrum. If one paints tight, incorporating just what one sees than the options are limited making the task more clearly defined. But if one wants to move beyond just ‘what is’ then the painter must make decisions either intuitively or planned. I decided since my intuitive work was really bad, that I had to do the latter, be more planned and deliberate with the goal of becoming more intuitive once my eye/ hand co ordination and knowledge of my craft improved.

This began as a literal rendition of lupine and woods but moved into playing with depth of field altering values and temperature of colors..

I call myself an interpretive realist. I like the realism of visual recognition but with interpretive qualities such as deliberate loose color and marks. I have done abstractions, these come more easily to me, however they do not contain the worlds I want to share. A much later epiphany is, and I will touch on this again in the future, is a methodology to achieve this. Starting with almost a study and the rendering of what is, then move to loose gestural choices of color and mark making that create the energy and visual effects I want. That, ‘I want’ is the vision of my work, the guiding quality that helps me determine which of the kajillion choices of paint mixtures and mark makings are at my finger tips.

Epiphany # 19 : I am deeply grateful to my parents for exposing me to and helping me be comfortable with complexities and contrasting ideas creating many different paths towards a vision. ( And this sure helped when I was teaching English in Middle and High School!)

What do you do to expand your comfort level with complexity? How does this feed your art?