Sunday, August 12, 2007

Painting Schizophrenia

It seems I have two paintings styles. Or maybe it's just that I can't decide what genre I want to paint in. I love graphic minimal paintings, but I also love paintings with lots of swirls and colors. When I paint, I always have two or more canvases going.



One canvas is usually the swirly, free canvas. And the other precise and geometric.

Remember this painting from an earlier post?





Well, I painted this one on the same day. Two very different paintings. The swirly ones are much more free and fun. I get frustrated with the minimal paintings, because they are never as perfect and precise as I'd like.





Often, I do a painting like this and it sits for a while. If I like it, I leave it alone. Sometimes I decide to add more paint to it. As was the case today with this painting, which now looks like this:


I'm not sure what happened here. A friend said he thought it looked like a dragon. I don't see that. I thought maybe it looked like those barbed wire tattoos, or maybe a Chinese character.

I remember Picasso saying that the hardest part about painting is knowing when you are done and that sometimes he wished he had someone to pull him away from a canvas when he was done. I have thought the same thing. I sometimes have to literally drag myself away from a canvas, because I am not sure it is done and my inclination is to just keep layering paint on.

Is this painting done? I am not sure. What do you think?

3 comments:

kim. said...

I like the black designs (reminds me of Arabic letters) you added to it. But I'd leave it alone now. Looks done to me.

Vineeta said...

I've posted a comment on your flickr about this painting. I personally love this style. its really graphic and balanced. And u said it- what probably works for it is the precise geometry and the srongs swirls. i loved the 2 little dots u've placed on the blue band as well. good stuff! like kim said- looks done to me. but the last call should always be the artists.

Peggy said...

Thanks Kim and Vineeta. I hung it last night and I think it is done. I think I really like this style, so will be doing more of this, the geometry mixed with the swirls.

Vineeta - those two little dots were supposed to be birds, ha, ha.

I see I need to post a better picture - one not so blurry. Took that shot at midnight.

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