Back to Painting: The process

I just needed to get back to painting. There seems so much that I want to do with it, and really find my voice. I have been mixing media and printmaking and doing visual journals, but painting is my first love and I want to get to that visceral place where my abstraction is compelling and and my expression enigmatic. I want it to convey glimpses of thought/memory/idea/feeling. I want it to reach people in a place beyond words. Because that is what I want to describe, that place where we KNOW, but cannot quite articulate. Perception. Existence. What it means to be human and be in the world.

At some point I will be able to articulate that. It is ineffable though. The struggle to do so is the process that I love. Paint has texture, color, shape, stroke, gesture, layer, transparency/opacity, line, composition to work in it’s favor to convey this idea.

So I am going back to class. Studying with Dan Becker at the Ridgefield Guild of Artists. He gets me. We speak the same language. I appreciate his comments and assistance and his pushing me. I like being challenged and stretched and I needed someone to help me do that. It couldn’t be done in the studio in a vacuum.

In the pursuit of trying to understand that wonderful striving, in my baby steps of getting back to my painting roots, I will show you the journey visually. Where a painting comes from and where it goes.

This is the first installment of that process.