A zillion years ago, during undergrad, I took a lot of painting classes–almost as many as I did printmaking. Since we didn’t have to declare majors or concentrations at UT Austin, I never was a “painting major” any more than I was a “printmaking major” or “metalsmithing major” or “ceramics major”. I love all of these ways of making art, but I will admit that I had to stop taking painting classes because I couldn’t abide the inherent sexism in the department. To be fair, there were some fantastic woman painting professors, and generous-hearted male painting professors; the sexist culture came predominately from the history of painting, from the male painting students, and from one ignorant male professor. It was enough for me to turn away from that area of study towards techniques that I couldn’t learn on my own because they required specialized expertise, as well as large, expensive, difficult to acquire equipment. I then happily learned printmaking, non-ferrous metalsmithing, and ceramics, but I never stopped loving the act of painting.
I started testing the painting waters during the start of the pandemic–it had been so long since I had used oils (I’ve been using gouache and watercolor in some of my work since 2016), that I had to refamiliarize myself with the type of marks I could make, and the type of marks I like to make. For a good long while now, I’ve also been concentrating on monotypes in my printmaking, which, in using oil-based inks, are very similar to painting, though the application and effects can be quite different. I had to, essentially, rediscover what was possible.
Finally, after taking some advice from my students and purchasing some of the new “oil paper”, that can be used for oil painting without gesso, I found an incredible body of work which is like an amalgam of my drawing, printmaking, and now oil-painting. I’m enthusiastically excited about it, and will be focusing on it–though I will still make some monotypes and monoprints.
This post has some casual documentation of some of the paintings I’ve made since September, all of which as yet are untitled, and all of which will be professionally documented starting in 2023. For the moment, they’re 12″ x 16″ in size, all oil and graphite on paper. I will be making works both larger and smaller as well, but I’m exploring the vernacular of marks at this size to be certain of them first.
The working title for the series is “Reflecting Pool”, and the works all feature a split between bright and dark, or, if not that, then a body of water or a cave/path/entrance, and are envisioned from the remembered experiences of time spent in the natural world. The works are meant to be both celebration and grief for the world we’ve had and the world which we are losing–even actively destroying. They are meant to offer the beauty that one can feel when one really inhabits one’s body during key moments of life–the complex union of gratitude and loss which can resonate so deeply in each of us.
Individual works are as-yet untitled, though I have some pages of prospective names in my sketchbook.
