So this is the part where people really think I'm crazy. Hopefully the fact that I'm documenting this and speaking about it so freely will one day give people a slightly different impression. It is madness, but it has vision and method to it.
There's this canvas, this one canvas that has been sitting in my studio, taking up space in a corner, on the floor, against a wall. This canvas has been draining me. It's not a very big canvas, it only measures a perfect 20 x 20 inches. A perfect square, and it bothers me. It's kept me up at night. It's fought with me over the right colours, the right shapes, and it has refused to yield. I can't make this one be what I need it to. It isn't cooperating like the rest. It won't allow me to use my rigid sense of line. It won't allow me to seduce it with a curve or appeal to its vanity with a bright splash of colour. So instead I have finally yielded to it.
Years from now, if this work ever loses touch with the hands of a private owner, it may end up in a collection somewhere. It might end up instead in the hands of a curator or a restorer. It might be photographed, tested, archived, scanned and even x-rayed. And to the person who took the time to look beneath the surface, they'll find a battle waiting for them... my battle. Underneath what is now flat, lays the battle field of the first canvas I've ever lost a fight against. The x-ray will no doubt show multiple layers of colours, circles that didn't quite overlap, shapes that didn't join quite right or lay where I wanted them to. All of this will no doubt come out of the x-ray.
What won't come out was my voice behind it. This canvas didn't want to follow suit and continue on in the fine tradition of my Organic Series pieces. The shapes ran off one edge as if they were trying to escape. The colours bickered. The red too orange, the orange too pale, the white completely misplaced. I mixed and remixed. I waited and reapplied. The usual tricks of leaving it alone for awhile didn't work. Turning it upside down didn't work. Looking at it in different lighting didn't work. Nothing worked. So eventually I gave up.
Now normally, giving up means the canvas collects a few layers of dust, then one day it goes into the fire. Or I shred it with my hands. This one decided for itself that it was going to live and no amount of dust or cobwebs or abuse by sunlight was going to change that. Three weeks ago I gave in. If it wanted to live then I was going to do as it asked. I went to work sanding and gessoing. I tried to cover the blemishes, my mistake, my errors in judgement. The canvas
started behaving again. It gave up its silence and it started talking to me again.
It was going to be something different and unlike anything I'd done before. Very carefully, I started to apply a colour. One colour. One colour because that was all it wanted to be. All debates about colour aside, when you look at the final piece you'll say to yourself, "but Dee that's not finished." And I will argue to my last breath that indeed it is finished. FINALLY.
This is my piece entitled the unfinished canvas. To the casual eye it will look unfinished, completely unlike me. It won't have the perfectly flat surface or the lines and shapes so articulately done that you'll wonder how steady my hand had to be to do this. No... you will see brush strokes, unfinished looking and a bit mishapen. But trust me, this canvas is finished. If it could breathe a word it would be this one. "Enough." So I listened.
This canvas wasn't ever meant to be finished, that's why it was laboured over for so many months. It knew it wasn't meant to be like the rest. No bright colours, no perfect lines or subtle organic shapes. It is what it was meant to be. But look closer, there's still a lot of me in this. There's still that sense of controlled paint and brush, or anal retentiveness, that old obsessive compulsive thing rearing its ugly head. The canvas is finished. The black stretching only just as far as it needs to, off and over three sides, but not fully four. Look for the first time at the back of the canvas and notice something. It too has been painted to the edge of the canvas.
So tonight I finally feel like it'll let me sleep. Here it is... my latest finished work, "The Unfinished Canvas".
There's this canvas, this one canvas that has been sitting in my studio, taking up space in a corner, on the floor, against a wall. This canvas has been draining me. It's not a very big canvas, it only measures a perfect 20 x 20 inches. A perfect square, and it bothers me. It's kept me up at night. It's fought with me over the right colours, the right shapes, and it has refused to yield. I can't make this one be what I need it to. It isn't cooperating like the rest. It won't allow me to use my rigid sense of line. It won't allow me to seduce it with a curve or appeal to its vanity with a bright splash of colour. So instead I have finally yielded to it.
Years from now, if this work ever loses touch with the hands of a private owner, it may end up in a collection somewhere. It might end up instead in the hands of a curator or a restorer. It might be photographed, tested, archived, scanned and even x-rayed. And to the person who took the time to look beneath the surface, they'll find a battle waiting for them... my battle. Underneath what is now flat, lays the battle field of the first canvas I've ever lost a fight against. The x-ray will no doubt show multiple layers of colours, circles that didn't quite overlap, shapes that didn't join quite right or lay where I wanted them to. All of this will no doubt come out of the x-ray.
What won't come out was my voice behind it. This canvas didn't want to follow suit and continue on in the fine tradition of my Organic Series pieces. The shapes ran off one edge as if they were trying to escape. The colours bickered. The red too orange, the orange too pale, the white completely misplaced. I mixed and remixed. I waited and reapplied. The usual tricks of leaving it alone for awhile didn't work. Turning it upside down didn't work. Looking at it in different lighting didn't work. Nothing worked. So eventually I gave up.
Now normally, giving up means the canvas collects a few layers of dust, then one day it goes into the fire. Or I shred it with my hands. This one decided for itself that it was going to live and no amount of dust or cobwebs or abuse by sunlight was going to change that. Three weeks ago I gave in. If it wanted to live then I was going to do as it asked. I went to work sanding and gessoing. I tried to cover the blemishes, my mistake, my errors in judgement. The canvas
started behaving again. It gave up its silence and it started talking to me again.
It was going to be something different and unlike anything I'd done before. Very carefully, I started to apply a colour. One colour. One colour because that was all it wanted to be. All debates about colour aside, when you look at the final piece you'll say to yourself, "but Dee that's not finished." And I will argue to my last breath that indeed it is finished. FINALLY.
This is my piece entitled the unfinished canvas. To the casual eye it will look unfinished, completely unlike me. It won't have the perfectly flat surface or the lines and shapes so articulately done that you'll wonder how steady my hand had to be to do this. No... you will see brush strokes, unfinished looking and a bit mishapen. But trust me, this canvas is finished. If it could breathe a word it would be this one. "Enough." So I listened.
This canvas wasn't ever meant to be finished, that's why it was laboured over for so many months. It knew it wasn't meant to be like the rest. No bright colours, no perfect lines or subtle organic shapes. It is what it was meant to be. But look closer, there's still a lot of me in this. There's still that sense of controlled paint and brush, or anal retentiveness, that old obsessive compulsive thing rearing its ugly head. The canvas is finished. The black stretching only just as far as it needs to, off and over three sides, but not fully four. Look for the first time at the back of the canvas and notice something. It too has been painted to the edge of the canvas.
So tonight I finally feel like it'll let me sleep. Here it is... my latest finished work, "The Unfinished Canvas".
