The big summer events of late summer and early autumn have
been covered with the usual angst. The biggest jobs, Art Prize and the featured-artist
show in the lower wing at a large physician’s building consumed a good deal of
organizing time. The Physician’s Building show, through October, has twenty-five
paintings in a grouping titled, “Blue
Skies Smiling” (because I smile every time a clean canvas begins). These
big projects took most of the creative energy, while the real fun part of this
trip, painting, has been set aside.
So the tension and guilt to paint builds. My usual starters
seemed to fizzle out, building more tension. The two old friends that help in
the painting restart mode were employed, Art
and Fear (Bayles and Orland) and Hawthorne
on Painting (Charles Hawthorne, 1938, available from Dover). Both books
have many passages tagged by sticky notes. I am ready for their soothing
guidance. The note markers lead to a quiet confidence drifting over my creative
soul and yes the process worked. I did go back to the studio and painted the
way that felt right, free and spontaneous.
The newsstand magazines encourage artists to blog and blog
often, almost like vote and vote often. The articles also encourage showing the
latest work. Sounds good and worth considering but for many the process of
creating is never quite completed. My studio work space has quite a few
paintings I know could use “just a little more something”. So when do I call a
painting completed? For some, including me, this is one of the most difficult
moments in the painting process - when to put the brushes, tubes of paint,
stirring sticks, pine boughs or whatever is being used in playing with the
paint, down and say, “finished”.
With all this prattle about getting started and then
stopping I humbly announce the completion of my latest painting . . . well
maybe.
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| Harmony, acrylic on linen, 20x24 |
Enjoy, Joel
Please check out www.joelellisart.com
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