Hello bloggers,
One subject that always comes up for a painter is: When do you know you’re done? The other question is: Now What? Put those together with other thoughts, and the saying that comes out of it is: “It’s all over but the shootin’.” I think painting is that way.
With my process, I have to really think about it and subconsciously come to a meeting of the minds between me and the paint and the background and the dip and all of the colors that are there, and consciously and subconsciously, through a partnership, present what we’re talking about to the world. It’s almost like building a building. You put the superstructure up. How is it going to stand, how is it flowing? That, then, dictates that you have to constantly be learning and looking at each piece you’re making, to believe that it’s the best you can do at that point in time.
I had occasion the last few weeks to work on two paintings that were mavericks. One was 4 feet by 8 feet, done on a board with burlap, and the other was a 3 foot by 4 foot. The 3 x 4 was a building-up of spirits, one on top of the other. The one on top, I like to put the eye as the portal for the soul, where we can look in and look out. It really isn’t alive unless there is some sort of an eye, or way to look into the painting, the composition. So I put this one eye in, and I always put an eyebrow—when I say I always do, that doesn’t mean I always do—and I thought, “Isn’t this great?” And the other one had a long neck.
The property of burlap is, it has its own mind. And with my process, it will start to bleed and drip, maybe after months. Why? I have no idea. It just does. So over time, I kept walking by, and the thing just kept looking at me and saying to do something. I thought the drips were good, but the voices kept saying, “They’re bullshit drips!” The 3 x 4 was mocking me every time I went by, so I consciously left them out in a place where I was forced to keep walking by them and listen to all their pissing and moaning.
So one day when I was ready to leave, I changed clothes, turned off the lights, and both of these paintings more or less attacked me and said, “You’re not getting away!” So I took a long time sitting with both of them and saying to myself, “If this were put in the Louvre, would I be proud of it?” I kept saying yes, and they kept saying no.
I finally forced myself to sit there and look at every part of those paintings, which were quite complex, and decided they were right and I was wrong. So it wasn’t all over but the shooting. It was all over but the complete surrender of my power to my partner, which I think would be the composition, flow, and direction, which has its own mind in many ways. So it made me very cognizant of the partnership I’m in and how I have to keep really looking and seeing and listening to myself. In those particular cases, I hadn’t really done as much homework as I thought I had, so it wasn’t really done. I think that is probably a universal problem with artists as they look at their own work.
For me, I must constantly pay attention at all times to the nth degree, both consciously but definitely mostly unconsciously. I paint to hard-rock music, and I can’t really think about it; I have to act almost automatically. If we allow ourselves to, we become a robot, so it should never “always” be this way. In my 76th year, I am blessed that the process demands constant attention, renewal, and reeducation. What do we do next, and when do we know it’s done? I have no idea. It just is what it is.
So I straightened those two paintings out, I left some of the drips, I eliminated some, and I put the eyebrow over the eye, and then it became a seeing eye rather than just a vacant eye. And I thought, “These two bastards, I’ll show them! Maybe I’ll put them in a closet!” But I didn’t. After admitting defeat, I bowed to their power. After that, I went back and looked at a lot of my other work and came to the conclusion this was the best I could do. But those two were really coaches, screaming, “Look at me! Do you really want to do this?” What is the lesson? Well, it’s that if you are an artist, there isn’t going to be a foreman telling you what to do all the time. You have to do that yourself. Once you think you have it nailed down, you haven’t. The nail’s gonna rust, and the damn thing’s gonna fall apart.
I believe our job is to ask, “What’s really in us? Are we truly looking for new and more innovative ways of expression?”
Matt