My art process begins in moments of boredom, which I religiously carve out of this busy, uber-connected life. Physically, my process begins with an energy-rich orange underpainting, and ends with a painting truly connected to the place that inspired it.
These photos are nice, but I mostly wanted to paint them
JUST BEGIN
I began painting again just one year ago, after a decade away. It began on our kitchen table in Maine, where I shoved everything else aside and just started. The voice in my head telling me to paint had suddenly become louder and more insistent than the one detailing every reason why it wouldn’t work. I also started sharing it, even though it admittedly wasn’t very good. It was part of the process, and part of holding myself to the plan, and I made myself do it so I could document the evolution.
Naturally they wanted to paint as well…all natural rock and mom painting on our beach ;)
THEN, JUST PAINT
I painted any time I got 5 seconds. With just a small one-room post-and-beam cabin, we mostly live and play outside while we are in Maine. We would be playing outside and I’d run in to refill water bottles and I would paint for 15 seconds before going back out. If I had a sitter, I trained myself to only paint. As a mom, it is tempting to use “sitter time” to run to the store alone, or clean, or respond to emails in peace, or work out, or do the thousand other things that are faster and easier without an entourage. But I only painted. I made an agreement with myself that I would suffer through grocery shopping with three small boys in tow, and I would answer emails and write blogs in the dark cabin after they were asleep. No lounging at a café with my computer while a babysitter played with my kids. If a sitter was there, I was painting. As the year went on, my process became more clear, and I honed it a little from simply “paint at any possible moment”. But those beginnings really helped me be in tune with my painting process, and helped me understand the steps that led to creating my highest work.
A SENSE OF PLACE
My paintings come from a deep connection to a place, and I imagine this is only enhanced by actually painting outdoors in those places. I would love to one day make plein air a regular part of my practice. For now, I paint from photographs, but I only paint from photos that I take myself. There are many amazing photographers out there, and it is tempting while scrolling through instagram to save photos for future use…but an important part of my process is the feel of the place. For this reason, I only paint from my own photos.
No matter where we were, I always had my camera…saltwater be damned
EMBRACE BOREDOM…It’s a form of meditation
Once I have a collection of photos from a place, any new painting I create from those photos begins in quietude. Some may even call it boredom. Hide the remote and forget your list of podcasts. Embrace moments of stillness and treat opportunities for silence like the gifts they are. I like a good podcast or audiobook as much as anyone—and have a competitively long list of programs I try to keep up with, but just as often I jump at the chance for a quiet car ride or a silent day in the studio. Just me, the birds singing, and my thoughts bouncing around. These moments are sometimes difficult to carve out in anyone’s life but they are so crucial to my creative process. I find it in the spaces that I’m tempted to fill with instagram scrolling, or reading on my kindle. When I’m putting my boys to bed, I used to feel like a prisoner in a dark room. I would have so many ideas flying through my head, and tasks I wanted to accomplish once they were FINALLY asleep…and yet there I was, stuck in a dark room with kids sometimes physically holding their eyelids open, thwarting my plans.
More scenes of Maine…re-thinking my plan to leave my oil paints behind this summer
And so many photos from our travels that I would love to paint as well
With anything frustrating that we feel we cannot change, the shift eventually comes within our own mindset. I painted a beautiful—if I do say so myself—painting, one that I felt marked a new level in my personal style. This painting came after a period of waiting, in which I had spent a lot of time envisioning the process of painting it, without being able to start painting. This painting made me appreciate the waiting period. I realized suddenly that these moments could be treated as a gift, and could actually help me grow my practice. These moments of forced quietude should not be filled, they should be listened to.
THE PHYSICAL PROCESS
My physical process of painting begins with an orange-red underpainting, usually cadmium red light, mixed with a tiny bit of white. I have tried every color—I used to simply use whatever paint I had left on my palette. One time, briefly, I got really excited about turquoise underpaintings. These were all terrible and I STILL have a stack of turquoise canvasses waiting to be covered over in white, then orange.
The beginnings of my latest painting: orange-red, then a rough sketch and a beginning layer
On top of this base, I then use a pastel to quickly and loosely sketch my planned composition, while using my reference photo. I then put my photo aside, and bring the painting to about 80% completion before I ever reference the photo again. I add some final details, sometimes breaking for a week or even two to meditate on it for a while. Eventually I tweak the final details, sometimes adding marks with pastels, sometimes not. It all depends on the feel of the work in front of me!
What do you think? Which of these photos should I paint next?
I have about 1000 photos of the ocean that I will one day paint—I made my son choose a few for me to include here, or I would have been sidetracked for days…
