William wrote: > My own process in painting is like Cheerskep's process in writing. But there's > something in Mando'sartmaking experience that rhymes with mine as well.
I usually paint in the afterglow of the last painting and bring to the new one the motifs, techniques, and other mechanisms of the prototype. I don't make a preliminary drawing, but when I incorporate figures in my works, I select a life drawing from many big tablets of them and then redraw the figure on the canvas. From there, I develop the painting in the spur of the moment, as I am painting, as I am watching the image grow. I attempt to "evacuate my personality" so as not to be concerned for how I look or am connected to the painting. I use a method I call "looking away," in which I try not to guide the painting a predetermined ending. Of course I do look at the painting and I do decide what to do to get to the next point, but in my experience, when I look ahead to the ending I hope for, I produce a poor painting and get involved in paying the wrong kind of attention to what I am doing. I recognized a long time ago that (a) I can rely on my trained skills and talents to perform well so that I don't worry about making the strokes (like a gymnast who knows so well how to perform a vault or summersault that she can pay attention to her hand positions, not to actually rotating her body); and (b) my work will look like its mine and not contrived or a mimicking of someone else's. I can evacuate my personality, as I call it, because I know I won't lose it or lose my style of painting or the focus of my attention. As to the referential dimension of painting, acceding to Cheerskep's friendly cajoling, I've begun to describe seemingly "abstract" images as things that remind me of other things, rather than "look like" or "mean." It happens constantly when I am working and when I am just looking at other works. One detail (or an entire work) reminds me of X or Y, which may be an object in the world or the manner or style of another work of art. This detail "reminds me of" Frankenthaler's style or this detail "reminds me of" a typeface or fabric pattern or a place I've been to or seen in pictures. I suspect what I am describing is akin to what Saul's referred to as "semiotic" thought. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
