Done with Grandma

Well, I'm not really done with Grandma, of course.  She seems, in fact, to be a surprisingly persistent muse, and I am even currently working on one other Grandma-related piece: the serial post-it note story of grandma/granddaughter road-trip that I've been inserting into library books...

But I'm done with Grandma in Brush.  Here's one last process shot:

I was pretty nervous after adding that bright minty green to the foreground.  But now that the painting is complete, I think I'm happy with the final product:

This is the first painting in a long time on which I've used more brush than palette knife, and I was evidently having fun with the brush strokes.  I was thinking about David Hockney's recent work a bit, and also a little about Laura Owens, although the end result is pretty dissimilar.  Here are a few detail shots:

Grandma is Getting There

I've picked up some steam on the painting that I've taken to calling Grandma in Brush.  Here are the next batch of process shots:

Sadly, because I'd been doing so little painting recently, "picking up steam" really just means working on the piece for about three hours a day, every other day.  Between the first image above, and the second one, I spent about five hours painting.  The difference between the second image and the third one represents about six hours of painting.

Painting Progress

I've done some more work on this painting.  It didn't feel like it had been that long since I'd worked on it, but it is a bad sign when you need to dust your pallete off before use.

Here's the current status:

I have always loved cropped details of my paintings. The way that the colors and textures interact always feels surprising to me - like something I didn't intend, but just happened upon when I wasn't paying attention. Here's a detail from my recent efforts:

I tend to feel like details like this make really nice abstract compositions, and yet I very rarely paint abstractly, and when I do, the results lack interest for me.  Abstract painting in general lacks interest for me.  As with poetry, where I love a good turn of phrase or pairing of words, but cannot get into work that is all about the aesthetics of words without any larger story or image involved, I love the abstract details of interacting paint, but need it to be couched in a discernible narrative, image, or idea.

For a as long as I've been painting, that larger image has almost always involved the human figure, but in this painting so far, and in my last one, I actually ended up paying much more attention to the background. As if the figure was an excuse for painting bushes and wallpaper.  It makes me wonder if I should try doing some work that is not abstract, but not figurative.  Work where I abandon the figure altogether, and focus on what I've been putting behind them.

Grandma in Brush

Although it is not a crowd scene in the way I'd earlier envisioned, I finally started painting the long-prepped canvas I'd been neglecting since, what, September?

Christmas with the family got me thinking about my grandma, a subject I've painted on multiple previous occasions. In this 48" x 60" painting she will be enveloped in a crowding riot of flowers. Below are a few process shots.




I started the painting last night, largely as a way of entering the new year on a productive note. I'm surprisingly happy with what I've done so far - all work that I had intended to be under-painting, but to which I am now growing attached. It has me thinking that I should temper my use of palette knife with more brushwork this time around, and not just for the sake of puns.