Creating Art with Un-Inspiration

It can be difficult enough to find images or ideas that inspire an artist to create art. Commission work can supply the inspiration, but what if the image itself has an emotional aspect that interferes with the creative process? This is how I moved forward on one such piece.

Upon returning from PAFA to the Seattle area I was focused on setting up a studio so I could get back to work. This is one of the paintings to come out of that studio and is the first painting I created representing someone whom I disliked at the time. Ex-lovers are always a point of contention. Long story short I agreed to create it by special request - I’ll leave it at that. ​

​I found it difficult to even begin and had no vision for what I wanted the finished work to look like. A previous work I created at PAFA, “Obscured,” used multiple layers of canvas and thickly applied paint to create the image. I was intrigued by an idea that came about during the creation of that piece when it was suggested to me that I could use “pieces of paint” instead of “smearing it across the canvas.”

“Long Gone Days” 4’ X 4' Acrylic and Oil on canvas. 2003

At that time I had an important “moment” in my development as an artist, a realization that emotional attachment to the original image, at times, would have to be subverted by the process and irrelevant to the methods of the construction of a painting if I were to ever paint professionally. Approaching the task at hand from a more technical perspective freed me to explore the medium and remain playful in my work. I attempted, with reasonable success, to make one singular motion for each mark. I would pick up a “piece” of paint with the palette knife and lay that piece where it needed to go on the canvas. Mistakes were either immediately scraped off or allowed to dry and painted over, but no pushing paint around was allowed- no secondary little “nudges.”

"Long Gone Days" hanging in a solo show at Pierce College, Puyallup in 2011. 

The process was similar to creating a puzzle, where slowly the image began to take form. I felt a bit of kinship with artists from the past who experimented with paint and color in similar ways during the Impressionist, Neo-impressionist, and Pointallism movements. The overall effect is much different than those works, but a multitude of colors show themselves throughout this painting. Up close the viewer would have a very different experience than when viewed from afar. I have only recently returned to this technique and hope to be able to share the experience soon.

To purchase a reproduction of "Long Gone Days" visit my online store at https://society6.com/product/long-gone-days_print#s6-875696p4a1v45