I've been working on different ways to explore the repetitive strokes, and it is leading me in two directions: work that is more minimal, and an urge to return to my gestural work. In my opinion, my gestural work is much stronger for the more disciplined kind of painting I've been doing. Perhaps it is simply a matter of how many times your brush hits the surface and what you learn from that. Thinking about this reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour concept in "Outliers". I certainly have far to go, but I am indebted to my mentor, who wisely charged me to return with 20-30 paintings for each of our meetings, without going into any long explanation as to why. And it has shown me that many days will feel like nothing is happening (or lots of not so pretty things are happening), but showing up and sticking my brush into the paint will eventually lead me to somewhere.
Yes... writing friends of mine say it's a matter of getting yourself to sit in the chair...
ReplyDeleteI was wondering if you had ever thought of combining the two kinds of work in a single diptych or triptych... I love both of your approaches here and it seems a shame to have to choose one over the other... and the combination could be quite amazing!
If you can, come see my site... I am a painter: http://annknickerbocker.com Take care!
Thanks for commenting, Ann. I am definitely looking at combining the work into diptychs and triptychs. I'm also thinking about showing both kinds of work together, and seeing what kind of conversations happen between the paintings. Because gesture and stroke is important to me -- and right now I'm exploring paring it down; isolating each stroke/stripe. But it is definitely not about being a "minimalist" nor exactly about pattern and repetition.
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