Painting class #10

Get comfortable...I'm feeling wordy. Maybe its because it's almost November 1st (and the beginning of National Novel Writing month!!), or maybe it's just my brain still in high gear.

I've read more books in the past 2 months than I read all last year. Thats kind of freaky. (and sad?) I told a friend that right now I just need to throw as much as I can in the till while I can still consume the information. It seems like somewhere around March my brain begins to slow and shut down it's capacity for processing new information. Weird machine, my head.

Any way...what was I thinking? OH! Yeah...painting....it's all sort of running to together in a really wonderful way right now. The characters in my head, the brush in my hand, the music playing in the car....all one force.

I am almost done with our most recent project. The object was to choose a phrase from a list given to us and express it in a non-representational manner.

One option was clear for me. I laughed out loud when I saw it: "Losing His Grip".

I had to paint it. I am neck-deep in the research phase for the re-write of Blood Freckles (which will probably NOT be the title, by the way). Most of my research has been about mental illness ad what it really means to be Schizophrenic or have Manic-depressive illness. I've found that the rabbit hole goes very, very deep and the possibilities for misdiagnosis are incredibly high. (an sad fact, but advantageous for the sake of my plot line) Especially for John Louwen...my character. He is no longer some words on a paper- after so much research and thought, I can almost hear him breathing.

It was clear to me that this painting is about him. About him losing HIS grip....the world falling away into a fog or an abyss. All the parts of him he tries to hang onto fragmenting into something he cant control. Beautiful and sad.

The form came to me immediately- and the paint just flew out onto paper (which I already posted about)



I don't know what it is about this shape that keeps coming out of my paint sketches, but I'm trusting that its what needs to be expressed.

Here is the piece itself- not finished, but heading that way:



And now with some more work on it but still not finished:


My other conceptual paint-sketches are around the piece...I'm still trying to figure out what else needs to be in this painting.