With so many different directions to go in, I’ve been thinking a lot about where to start? Most of my paintings in the last several years have started with pooled colors that I then respond to in a variety of ways. But with a painting of this size, I want a plan as to where I’m going. I can’t get half way through, and corner myself with a color or compositional problem, that could be really costly to fix due to the sheer size of the piece. Plus, I have a client that wants a general idea of what they are getting, and I need to deliver it on time for the lobby opening. I can’t get stuck for a month trying to resolve a problem, which—let’s be realistic—might happen anyway!
On my way in to the studio last night, I saw a card of mine that caught my eye. It had a detail of a small painting I had done a couple of years ago on it, where I used cheese cloth as the basis of one of the layers. It gave me an idea…. I took some cheesecloth I had laying around in the studio and I projected it 8-feet high on my studio wall:
I was excited about the potential of using this as an idea, or at least as part of the process, so I decided to make a large marker sketch (this is about 4 x 5 feet) to get a feel for the pattern it made, and how I might manipulate the negative and positive shapes. Too literal here, but the idea is taking hold….
