This time, it was thirty-five years between brush strokes.
My art was renewed six years ago when I picked up a 6B pencil and began again to sketch. For two years I took evening life drawing classes at the Maine College of Art (MECA) in my adopted hometown, Portland Maine.
I started with the familiar. The human body had always intrigued me and years before, I'd had formal instruction during my undergraduate education while studying architecture. But now, to my surprise, I found that drawing the figure and using the pencil were not enough. I was at a cross roads: either accept this new challenge and move forward or again abandon art. This time, I took the plunge. For the next three year, again at MECA in the evenings, I committed to the serious study of painting.
Paint, more accurately, color scared me to death.
I quickly found that realism bored me but abstraction intrigued me. I stopped painting the still life and from photographs. Instead, I began to slash and burn; images came from I know not where.
Using brushes and canvases of ever increasing size, I found bold strokes came easily but I was conflicted as I wanted to maintain and honor the power and subtly of the line. Before I knew it paper towels, fingers, palette knives and blunt instruments were added to my toolbox.
Subtlety was not my forte. But with time and considerable effort, both subtlety and nuance began to appear and become incorporated in my work. Of great importance, I learned that courage was essential as nothing on the canvas could be considered sacred.
Do I plan a painting? Not in what I consider a formal sense. Instead, I usually start with a proportionally pleasing canvas, then choose an appealing, often limited, palette and finally I just start with a few first, often bold, strokes. With that, I have something to work with.
Then, I step back, ponder and ask the age old question..... What does it want to be?
Although I often paint quickly, I've finally learned that patience is imperative. I take my lead from the canvas and, on a good day, allow the piece to reveal itself. For me, it is the open-ended process that really counts. While a general theme may exist at the outset, the end product does not. Most critical to me is the freedom to explore and the evolution of the painting.
Typically, I paint in my studio. Except for life drawing models, my subjects come from experience or my mind's eye. My work is a product of my mind's eye. Inspiration comes from the coast of Maine, the high desert of New Mexico, the human body and humor.
My work is meant to be collaborative. It is offered to you not as a series of specifics but rather as a dialogue or series of suggestions; sometimes familiar, sometimes not. Your participation is encouraged and for our communication to be successful, it is in fact mandatory.
Make of it what you will and what your imagination will allow.
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