The Intuitive Romantic

Despite my fatigue and self doubt that I brought into the studio after teaching today, I made a personal breakthrough. The ah-ha moment happened when I allowed myself to be hopelessly Romantic, by creating a silhouette of the architectural form of the "Duomo" in a backlit sky. I also brought back air and movement into my work, through the application of loose, painterly marks using a range of small, medium, and large brushes, as well as my pallete knife. In doing so, the incised grid I have been incorporting, to help establish unity, became integrated by means of it moving back and forth in the space. Through the layering of paint, areas of the grid get buried, whereas other areas I incised back out, come forward.

The artists I thought of when painting today were my graduate school mentor, Helen O'Toole, Turner, Cezanne and Monet. It is interesting how I always resist my affinity to Monet. I guess I resist him because he was so often marketed by the Art Institute of Chicago, but after all those years of looking at his haystacks and waterlilies, his color, light and brush strokes have left unending impressions on me.

A few last practical thoughts are that becuase I am painting in oils, I will begin to keep five paintings going at once, in order to be able to paint on at least one everyday. Also, in order to continue the connection I am forming with my paintings, if I can't paint for a day or two for some reason, if I just sit and look at them for a while, I can keep the connection going.