So I’m standing in my studio working in a painting tonight. It’s somewhere in the middle phase where the overall composition is pretty intact but I’m still working the different elements to explore how they relate through value, texture, and hue. Pushing things forward and backward in the composition until they sit at the right balance. Adding some new color in the body, which then highlights the need for some bolder linear elements in the upper right, which then points to the lower left corner just being too light. And in this process of moving elements and negative space around, it occurred to me how unique painting is in its exclusively additive nature.
As someone who comes from a more sculptural and three-dimensional background with some drawing thrown in, I’m very comfortable with adding and subtracting at the same time. Cut a new panel (subtractive), glue it into the larger assembly (additive), and then drill a hole in it (subtractive). I’d always be going back and forth between adding and removing, putting more on and then taking some away again. But painting is quite different. You basically never remove. You just add more on top. Don’t like that color? Paint over it. Want to move a line? Add more paint to one side or the other. You never erase, you never cut away. What’s there will essentially always be there. It may not be visible or obvious or known to anyone but the painter, but it will forever live on as a part of the work.
I can’t think of too many other mediums that are similarly completely additive yet allow an essentially infinite capacity to edit and change as you go. You don’t have to make the decision about whether to permanently remove something from the work, which can feel rather weighty in its irrevocability. Once you’ve removed something it’s hard to add it back. But with painting, you don’t have to think about that. You just have to think about what you might add. How you might go forward, for there is no possibility of going back.
I find this reality to be incredibly freeing. I can never totally mess up my paintings. If I don’t like a part or I drip paint where I don’t mean, I can just add more right on top. I’m never really working with a required finished surface from the get-go, like I might be in a work on paper or a piece of wood furniture. I can push elements of the work around and explore and feel them out until they’re right. I don’t have to commit to the cut, but the past choices are still forever there even if I can’t see them. They support the painting and make it what it is.
This built-in history, this innate representation of the entirety of the process is really what’s interesting to me. It feels just like human existence. You can never erase parts of your past. You can never un-do things that you did, un-experience things you experienced. You can heal wounds and learn new things but that doesn’t replace your past. It just adds on top. Just like the painting, you are a physical manifestation of all that’s happened to you. All the shooting stars you’ve seen, all the dumb arguments you’ve made, all the warm hugs you’ve shared. They form an infinite number of tiny layers that make up who you are. Just like the layers and layers of paint as I try and discover what the painting is asking me to make it. Just like you’re trying to discover who the universe is asking you to be.
This week:
1. I made a goth-y/witchy composition along with a lil video this weekend:
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2. I’ve been really enjoying the new A.G Cook album, Britpop:
3. I applied to have some work in Bend’s $20 art show, so fingers crossed I get some pieces accepted!