Slap it on!

Having prepped my largest canvas to date, and with ideas for another 3 larger scale paintings for my new theme, I find myself in a state of artistic paralysis with regards to getting started on any of this work.

I know in part why this is. Fundamentally, while ideas remain in the mind, they have not failed in reality. Fear of failure is crippling sometimes. I am occasionally told that I am too self critical of my work. My experience of other artists, however, is that we are all critical of what we do. Up to a point I feel this is a fairly ‘normal’ state of mind for the creative, and is what fires the desire to keep improving. It needs reigning in though, as working alone for most of the time requires a huge amount of motivation and self discipline; it doesn’t take much for things to grind to a halt.

In order to keep something happening, I continue to fiddle about with these small alla prima paintings. Here’s a couple that I have completed this week.

‘Matches and Mug’ began life with a better under drawing than is apparent in the finished piece. I wanted to experiment with mark-making and thicker paint, so I just let loose to see what would happen.

The drawing has been lost and there’s so much wrong with the painting, I don’t know where to start. However, there’s something about it that I like a lot. The immediacy of some of the brushstrokes, and the barely described objects have (to my eye) a certain charm about them.

More than anything, I want my work to look like my work. Evolving the style that will work as my signature is what is behind my general playing with this kind of painting.

The ‘Singing Nun’ (one of those snowstorm paperweights), is nothing more than a bit of fun. I am tempted to work back into it, losing some edges and refining others, but will probably leave it as it is and move on. There’s some canvases ready for me to stop ignoring.