Doubts and Persistence

It is hard. All painting is hard, but abstract painting, without the traditional preconceived ideas and planning, without the carefully drawn-out image ready to be filled in, without the pre-designed contours in mind,  seems impossibly difficult. But without these guides, which are in fact what I call tyrannies, making you do things which you don't really want to do, abstract painting is very hard. It's not just a case of slopping on and scraping off, sanding down, layering, and doing all these sort of Instagram things we see, and which can be so mesmerising while watching them. There still has to be skill and wise choices and good decisions, and there still needs to be good draughtsmanship and awareness of shape, colour and composition, and so on. And then of course, knowing when to stop. No one wants to stop; only a couple of minutes more and it'll be done. More likely hours, and then stuff is lost for ever because of tiredness or ordinary poor judgement.

The painting below took hours and hours, over a period of months. It is a large oil painting and some drying times were required. Once the painting was underway I began to make decisions, pictorial decisions, about relationships, contrasts, shape, colour. Contrasts begin to move things about, change and develop as the evolving image dictates. The images were not there initially, then they were, on the surface in full colour, and I had found them. Like all painters I was  looking for something, but didn't know what. That's the important thing. Put stuff down and relate to it, manipulate it, change it according to your instinct, skill, experience, and understanding of the pictorial values of shape, line, colour, texture, tonal value etc. Sometimes it's hit and miss, sometimes it just clicks, like the light bulb coming on. And you dash on and hope it gets better, but it often doesn't. All of this takes a long time. And we all need time to reflect, so longer still when coming back the next day or even later to check it out and probably finding stuff to change.

The painting certainly changed, but I'm not even sure it is better than it was. Probably not, and there is the feeling of loss when seeing the earlier versions again, and the feeling that I have wasted my time doing three or four separate paintings, one over the other. 

I am so disappointed with this painting. Must do better.

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