a girl, an ax, and all the aspens oil on canvas 25x30
This painting, like a couple I've been doing lately, has sort of taken a life of its own. Initially this was an abstract based on a scanner bed collage. But as I set about painting that abstraction, a conversation in paint began to take place between what was being put down on canvas and my reaction to it. Not to sound too pretentious or anything, but it was like the painting was sort of saying that it didn't want to be what I at first wanted. So I let go of my expectation of it and just let it become whatever it was to become. It's taken some time, but I've learned to appreciate that decisions made during the creation of a piece are not permanent. They can be altered, ignored, kept, or obliterated as one sees fit. And with this one, I would remind myself of that when I would put in something I wasn't sure about. In the end, this painting became a representational piece, but very quickly it could become an abstraction again. It's just a collection of colored shapes that become recognizable because their arrangement and modified margins remind the viewer of things they've already seen. I think this piece goes well inside the arena of representation, but for a while it road that line between abstraction and representation until it veered off that path and became something that I could respond to emotionally.