It's interesting what happens while someone paints the type of paintings I do. Well, I guess I should say "what happens to ME" because I'm not sure what goes on in the minds of other artists. As you know I finished my last painting while exploring ways of getting depth and richness from acrylics. And as you also know, I was only half way through the exploration when the whole thing settled upon my eye in such a way that I couldn't add any more to it. It was done. BUT, I still wanted to go through with the exploration on depth and so started another painting with that in mind. (Oh, by-the-way, in between I got inspired and added the third painting, "Feast" in the 'Primitive' series. I'll show a quick pic of that later).
What struck me while creating this painting is at some point during the process I began painting in detail and with purpose. If that sounds like a good thing, it is not - not for the type of paintings I do. In this case, I actually lost the 'proper' focus. As I said in my opening sentence, it is interesting how that happens when I'm not careful... or maybe too careful? You see, the way I paint, there is a strange, misty balance between being focused and not focused. It's an odd balancing act that can easily elude me. If I start looking too closely, start paying attention to too much detail, start purposefully creating each stroke, the whole thing becomes a contrived, kindergarten level mess (No offense to those wonderful kindergartener's works of art which are beautiful in their own way). This 'mess' is what happened when I started this latest painting. There was no flow, no balance. I was trying too hard to inject a color here and a highlight there. Thankfully, I noticed that this was happening after only a couple sessions and have started to correct it. But the incident made me think of an artist's technique. Some have to be meticulous in each stroke and detail. Some have to pour the paint and let color theory and gravity work it's magic. Others have to contrive a loose, carelessness. I'm in awe of the talent it takes for all these ways of creating gorgeous pieces of art. And for a few of us, we have to ride that elusive wave between contrivance and chaos, deliberateness and random happenstance. Maybe other artists are in awe of that technique too, I don't know; I guess that's why artists find other artists so interesting. I regress. In any case, the point is, each one must stay faithful to their technique; what works for them. I certainly must or I end up having to re-gesso the canvas and start over. Hmmm, I wonder what an x-ray would show on a few of my canvases. ;)