The painting process

I've had several conversations with artist friends about the process of making art. We all agreed that everything that goes into a piece of art is important in that the finished product or the final surface is influenced and shaped by everything that went before. That all the layers in a painting, even if they are no longer visable, influence the colors and textures of the surface. It's kind of like life, or history, each one of us are the sum total of our experiences. Even if you can't see the wins, losses, successes or scars, they are there, just under the surface and they influence how we think, behave and even look.

I decided that even though the importance of underlying, invisable layers is how they influence the surface, it might be nice to be able to share some of what goes into a painting, but eventually disappears.

In my recent series of paintings, Pits and Perception, I start with a complete charcoal drawing that eventually becomes covered by the oil paint. In order to share what goes on underneath the painting I decided to have my friend, photographer Gary Kalpakoff, come into my studio and photograph me painting Georgia. I've posted this series of pics on my Picasa Web Albums site.

I also posted some pics of several drawings before they were painted over. I took these with my Iphone and noticed that Picasa grabs the GPS info and creates a map of where the photo was taken! So you can see a map of (sort of) where my studio is! Anyway, with these drawings you can see another example of things that get covered up. I start with a quick gesture drawing, then a contour drawing on top of that, and a finished drawing on top of that. Then I get out the paint!