Another painting for The Sublime series.
This painting started out as a need to simply paint versus a need to say something: it wasn’t going to be part of any series. I needed to get my mind off of some things. Needed to de-stress. So I started making this painting. I decided to work on a perspective that I had been thinking about but had not tried to execute—I don’t know why. So, I thought, “Okay, let’s see this idea.” I just wanted to make it; see it. I did not have any patience. I started working backwards—images first instead of creating a unified foundation. Thus, as the painting progressed, it did not cohere. The negative space wasn’t working. It lacked the unification that an overall first layer would have created. I thought, “Oh, well, doesn’t matter. You can just keep pushing this, trying different things, this is just a fun experiment.”
Eventually, the piece arrived at a place where I felt that it was actually somewhat working, despite the varied techniques and seeming lack of harmony, and I said to myself, “Now, I can say something.”
I’m not exactly sure if I would exhibit this piece, but I think so. I will definitely keep it around for a while. I sort of love it.
FTL, 2021, mixed media on watercolor paper, 30”x22.5”
