“You were sick, but now you’re well again, and there’s work to do.”

I was working on this painting last night and the night before, and I had this moment where I knew it was done. Just done, finished. Maybe a day later or a week I’d find something else to do, some part that needed fixing, but at that moment I’d gone as far as I could go and it was time to quit. Clean up the brushes, turn off the music, go home.

So naturally, I kept painting. I kept touching up and fiddling with it, and all the while I’m thinking-- and in fact literally saying out loud to the other painters in the studio-- “Stop. Stop it. Put the brush down. Don’t-- don’t do it. Somebody take this brush away from me right now, please.” Finally I made myself stop and back away and put the brush in my solvent can before things got out of control. One of the other artists standing next to me said something along the lines of “Eh, you can come back and fix that tomorrow,” and I wanted to say “Are you out of your goddamned mind? If I ever touch that thing again, it’s all over.”

I’m doing this painting for a class. I have my degree now, you understand. I am a college graduate. Got the transcripts and everything. But I’m stuck here in this town until August with my lease, and I’ve got to get studio access somehow. So I’m taking another six hours mostly for the hell of it. Though also, I realize that just because I’ve graduated does not mean that I don’t have anything left to learn. I’ve got a long way to come as an artist, just in the next couple of years. And I’m not even talking about grad school here. I mean right now, this year, before I even apply. I have to be a better artist. I have to stop stalling and really figure out what I can do. I don’t do that, and my worries about grad school are moot.

You begin to see some of the pressure I’m feeling here.

My first painting this semester-- my first painting of the year, really-- was this big self-portrait. 3’ x 3’. It’s just a head and shoulders view of me, done from a mirror. Mostly acrylic and oil pastels. I was in a good place as I started working on it, and it turned out almost exactly how I wanted, good enough that I put it up on my wall (though that’s starting to get a little creepy now). I’ve never been big into putting text in a painting or drawing. It’s just very hard to do-- for me or anyone-- without coming across as hokey. I’m very self-conscious about it. But it was going well, and I was feeling up to a challenge, so I scrawled a few words across the bottom right corner:

“And so, freed, I began to paint.”

This was an announcement of sorts, the whole piece. I even put it up on the blog. I’d just come through the hardest of a string of hard years, and for the first time in ages, I felt really free. Like I had escaped my past, as much as someone like me ever can. I had a sense like I was ready to start something new. I kept thinking of this barely remembered quote from a book; someone says something like “The end. And now we can begin.” I felt like that. Finally, after so long, I’d reached the end. And now I could begin.

Now that sounds good, don’t you think? I mean, to me that sounds great. I read that and I think man, good for him. You go get ‘em, buddy. But of course, right away I hit a snag. Freed to paint, sure, but paint what?

The trouble, I realized, is that freedom, real freedom, is a scary thing. Real freedom means freedom from all my old ideas and preconceived notions about art, and especially my art. I was so dissatisfied with the work I’d been doing, how could I possibly pretend to be starting over if I was just doing the same old shit? Time to take a step back, look at things critically for a while. I’d been trying to do that already. Time to stop assigning motive and meaning and let them assert themselves naturally. Time to stop forcing my work, and instead simply let it develop on its own.

But develop from what? That was my problem. Even if you want to start over, you still need a starting point. No one really gets to abandon their past completely. I wanted a fresh start for my work, I still had to pick what to work on. That first piece, the self-portrait, was all I’d had in mind. Beyond that, I was stumped. I spend the better part of a week mulling things over in the studio with nothing to show for it.

Finally, one of the other students took pity on me, and we started talking about ideas. Sometimes you just need someone to talk to, to get things moving. She rattled off a few suggestions that I turned down, and finally said “Why don’t you do something with the skeleton?”

Now I realize that sounds ridiculous out of context, but this was a great idea. Immediately an image came to mind, a picture I could put on canvas. I started putting together compositions in my head. The skeleton, or rather a partial skeleton, was a perfect place to start for me. It was figurative, which is the one aspect of art that has always felt most comfortable to me, but at the same time because it’s bones not flesh, it’s alien, foreign. Abstract. I could take the human form, or a human-like form, and boil it down to only a few elements, arrange it compositionally rather than anatomically. The bones would be bones still, but more importantly they would be shapes. It’s almost impossible to explain, even to another artist, how much I needed that kind of formal release.

Also, conceptually, it intersected nicely with some of my personal interests. I have a great interest in symbolism and archetypal imagery. I’m fascinated by the occult and the arcane and the obscure. I like old things. Working with bones, particularly human ones, had a great appeal for me. The obvious implication of a skull or skeleton is death, but I’m hoping to move past that into something richer. In the Tarot, the skeletal Death figure actually represents change, the metamorphosis of Life into a new form. Until Medieval times, the skull was primarily associated with knowledge and learning. The ribs have a rich history of symbolism, most notably in Judeo-Christian myth. And so on and so forth. I wasn’t trying to think about all this as I started (if anything the reverse was true), but it was reassuring to me that it was there. I don’t want to start shoehorning some deep meaning into every piece again, but I want my paintings to have enough richness to them that they can take on meaning as needed.

So that brings me back to the beginning, this piece I was working on last night, the one I couldn’t stop playing with. It was the first painting I’d done with these new bone forms. Really, it was more a rough draft than anything else, a glorified sketch. I took it to what most people would consider a more or less finished state, but it’s not something I had any great attachment to. My involvement with it stemmed primarily from frustration. My hope with this smaller piece was to work out the kind of things I’d like to do when I approached the composition for real, at a much larger scale. But as so often happens, somewhere between the perfect image in my head and the materials and panel in front of me, something broke down.

Art is a very intuitive thing for me. I see other people who plan out their work in advance, painstakingly developing each element long before they begin the final product. I can’t do that. I admire it, and I’m jealous in a lot of ways, but I don’t have it in me. I do a quick sketch or two, arrange a picture in my head, and start working. The piece evolves in process, not always like I’d imagined. The art has a life of its own. When it goes well, the time flies by, and I usually know just when to stop. Something in my brain, some tiny voice, just says “Enough,” and there it is. Chances are it’s as finished as it’ll ever be.

When things are not going well, it’s a different story. That instinct I have that tells me what to do next and when to stop falls silent, and I find myself and the piece getting out of control. I can’t make it work, but I can’t stop trying. Even if, like last night, I get to a point where things are as good are they’re going to get, I still can’t quit. I have to force myself to walk away, or I’ll work the thing past the point of no return. Those are bad nights. I think part of it is because of the intuitive, unscripted approach I take, but mostly I think it’s for the same reason that I get “stuck” in front of bathroom mirrors, or can’t step on yellow lines. I’m have obsessive-compulsive disorder and I have to fight it in art just like every other part of my life. Just like every other part of my life, sometimes I lose.

Last night wasn’t a loss, though it wasn’t really a win, either. More of a no-score draw. I got stuck while working on a painting, and I let that impact the quality of the piece. That’s a bitch. On the other hand, the piece was not one that I had grand designs for in the first place, and when it was over, for the first time in two weeks, I felt confident enough to start work on the real deal.

It’s a big piece. Not my biggest certainly, but big enough to be excited about. To be completely honest, I still don’t know exactly what it’s going to be. I’ve developed this very definite process for working on a painting over the years, each step clearly defined, and I don’t know what stage I’ll be at when I get that sense of completion. It’s going well, though. It’s early yet, but it’s going well.

As I read back over all this, I guess my point, apart from wanting to provide a better glimpse of what it is I actually do, would be that I’m back. I’ve tried my best to let go of all the things that were holding me down, and I’m starting again. I don’t have a Big Idea, a Statement of Values or a letter of intention. I’m not chasing some phantom. I know what I want this piece to be, and the next one, and the one after that. The ideas are flowing again. The paint won’t always do what I tell it to, but I’ve at least got something to tell it. I’m ready, right now, this very second, to go into the studio, to pick up a brush or pen, and make art again. Whether it works or not, whether I’m having a good day or bad, it feels like the best part of me is finally awake after a long sleep. Like I was sick, but not anymore. I’m well again.

And there’s work to do.