Moving slowly, thick undergrowth

 

Eventually, at the deliciously unhurried pace that oils not only allow but insist upon, I finished the first series of tiny oil experiments.

The richness of pigment in oil astonishes me. A thin layer of thinned down oil paint glows. When you put another layer on later, the glow gets deeper. When you put on a layer of a different colour, the optical mixing is breathtaking.

And now for the second series of tiny experimental paintings, accompanied by one slightly larger.

There have been a number of technical problems with finding the right mix of black stuff to create the right kind of black line. The linen paper drags at the folded pen nib, the folded nib clogs up with the acrylic/gesso mix. The oil layers make a shine that the gesso removes when on paper. 

All of this subtly affects the quality of the line, which has to be drawn more slowly. I can't sweep at speed like before. Forms disobey my hand, blobs arrive. The energetics of the whole painting change. 

The slowness is ecstatic.

Cycling quietly through the brick wall

 

I wrote a post recently about my decision to have another attempt at seeing if I could learn to use oil paint in a way that worked for what I'm trying to do. I posted my messy smears as a protest against future frustrations, hoping it would help me to not get precious about whatever happened, and to try to help me to keep going through the disappointments that had ended up against brick walls in previous attempts over the years.

To my surprise, the walls have not really appeared so far, and I feel I'm starting to feel the simple rewards of not giving up. Any of it. Perhaps I needed to do a great deal of experimenting and learning about colour with acrylic first. The acrylic painting taught me that I loved thin paint and layers, and that acrylic could be used in this way. It let me hang on to my inky black line, and eventually it taught me that I didn't want to stay within lines of any kind. It let me learn a way of playing with figuration that was not tonal realism, and it helped me to learn about a process that wanted to be free to be itself, unhindered by my thoughts and desires and intentions.

One of the things that has facilitated what feels like a tiny, quiet leap forward has been the discovery of Seawhite's linen-textured oil painting paper. It's a most beautiful surface, like a fine white linen, but it lets you draw with ink and behaves mainly like paper. 

I was also helped through the maze of 'fat over lean' by a painter friend who explained that all the vague instructions about this online seemed to have been missing one key point; that whatever mix of medium/solvent/oil you use, you can always thin this down further with solvent. Liberation (at least until someone tells me why it's not a good idea to do this...).

The two little paintings above have had the most layers and time. The ones below are in various states of undress.

Exploring different ways of going over the line, and different ways of letting one colour meet another...

Smudgy softness, thin paint and solvent...

The same thin paint, a little less smudgy, some brushstroke edges...

Bolder and denser colour in the first layer, with more defined paint edges (that are going more obviously over the edge of the form...).

Writing this here to keep track of myself.

Today I'm studying how to make birds

 

I quite often read people on facebook berating themselves for having a mind that wanders, for starting one thing and ending up doing another. They've perhaps internalised a cultural idea that we're supposed to be 'keeping focussed'; finding our path and then setting about carving it deeper. Deciding what our art is about and sticking to that. Learning skills that will help us achieve our goals.

This is the opposite of what a creative process is for me. I try to attend to an allowing that will gently peel me off any ideas I might have about what I'm supposed to be doing. I welcome the arrival of an unexpected idea, or finding myself pursuing something that I had no idea was waiting to be explored. Something knows. If I shut up and follow, a deeper part of me which feels the world without thought or words always knows where to go next.

Today I'm studying how to make birds.