The Process

Why am I enjoying this painting process so much?

It's not as if I can revel in my mastery of the art yet.

Nor am I necessarily happy with my product...though for a guy who hasn't touched a brush in years, I am not unhappy with it either.

But enjoying it I am. On nights that I decide to paint, the process goes as follows:

I will come home and get out of my street clothes and throw on my khakis and a beat up old oxford shirt. I have a rope for a belt, because I need to keep the pants up and don't want to get paint on the belt. I have contemplated painting nekkid, but don't like the idea of wiping paint on myself...(I'm still a little too anal retentive for that)...but I am comfortable.

Then, I pick one of the canvases, figure out what I want to do and get the paint ready...mixing some primary color with others to get the proper shade.

I pour a bourbon.

I put on either a record (which of course causes me to interrupt my work to flip or change it every half hour or so) or a CD (usually jazz, velvet underground, the pogues...nothing like getting dark with some angry irish punk band!).

Then I go to town.

Usually, for efficiency's sake, I will find ways to use some similar colors, with variation on other canvases, so the paint on the pallatte kind of drives what gets addressed next...the brown of a rug in the self-portrait can then evolve into the auburn color of the gal in the tropic setting, which can then become the lighter brown of a bar in the "writer's block" piece.

Another idea I had was to link each painting with a poem that I've written...but that may limit me to old ideas.

Stylistically, it is uncertain where I am...probably a little Gaugin, perhaps some Hopper...I don't have the abstract mind yet to go nuts like Picasso or Pollack, but perhaps in time. I try not to be derivative, try not to look at other artist's work and just go with my own process.

And there is something more sensual about standing before the canvas, the brush an extension of one's self, looking over in the chair to see if my muse is there (and sometimes she is), the music, the bourbon...the moment or two of sitting and taking stock of what is painted.

Will I ever become disicplined? Will I ever create my own sense of discipline to do this right, stay with it?

Who knows?

But as long as the muse stays with me, I shall press forward.