Brunch and Composition

“Nothing is ever solved in painting. It’s a continuous chain that sometimes doesn’t go in one line but goes in a serpentine line or in crooked paths, detours, which have to be investigated”.

My husband and I were recently at brunch with some of his work friends, one year after he retired. They are a lovely group of people, open minded and inquisitive. One of them kindly asked me what motivates me in making art. It’s not a question I normally receive in a social setting. My answer was simple and straightforward about shape, form and color. More than anything, I want to take the viewer with me. I described my thought process and internal dialogue about accepting what happens on the canvas, when to walk away and when to stick with the process of shape shifting. Many things motivate me. I’m always looking at art.

What really motivates me about process is mostly in seeing what’s on the canvas and responding to that. There’s a methodology to making marks and creating form.

Fluid Properties | Oil on D’Arches paper | 40” x 40” | 2022

It takes me perhaps two weeks to complete a painting when I’m tuned into the process and able to focus, when there are fewer multiple competing priorities. I constantly struggle to keep things out of dead center in my compositions. It’s a hidden trap.

I had the opportunity to see the Joan Mitchell retrospective in San Francisco in November of 2021. Mitchell defied advice to not place abstract shapes in the center of the canvas. I like defiance, especially by women artists.

Shapes shift across the canvas or paper and cause a struggle and patiently wait for me to recognize what they need. During my brunch conversation, I mentioned that my relationship to painting is like coping with stubborn child. My husband, Pat prepared a place in my studio where I can hang paintings up out of line of sight to create some distance, a painting time out.

I don’t carry an umbrella anymore.

Fluid Properties 2 | Oil on D’Arches Paper | 40” x 40” | 2022

I live in the Pacific Northwest. The weather is a constant element in conversation. Especially when there is a 3-month drought during the summer. After the damage that last year’s heat wave, our garden had a difficult year this year.

I think the light, or lack thereof plays a part in the color selection of my paintings. Susan Rothenberg said she liked dirty white paint. I do too.