The ice breaking up on the lake, originally uploaded by leyaevelyn.
All I see is paint. Big slashes of paint. In all the colors I’ve been using for the past few days. After weeks of reworking older pieces, this week, finally, I’ve been starting some new paintings. Quite a few, actually. Completely virgin canvases. It takes several weeks of preparation to get to this point: stretching, priming, collage application, and silkscreening. By the time I finally do put the paint to the canvases, I feel exhilarated. And with so many new possibilities, it is definitely very exciting.
Except this morning, when I went into my studio, I felt completely blank. Yesterday, when I left the work, I know I thought I knew what I was doing. I had some ideas where specific paintings were going, what would be the predominate idea, the main color and such. But today, I felt, at first, like I was in somebody else’s playground. I didn’t have a clue what I might have been thinking yesterday. That didn’t last too long. I can, really, play anywhere. So I did. I just started painting and didn’t care if it was a continuation or a new thread.
If I worked from a sketch or a preliminary painting, I suppose it would be different. I don’t. I just paint and see what happens. It feels so good just to be painting.