Control

Acrylics, the medium I use most, are almost impossible to control. They dry rapidly, so a color that is flowing smoothly becomes sticky in about ten minutes. They vary in transparency, with some colors completely covering paint underneath and others allowing tones to blend through. Purposeful transparency is called glazing in oil painting, but is more a nuisance than a technique in acrylics. It’s difficult to define thin lines or hold strong brush strokes for textures with acrylics. And the colors are always too bright for natural themes.

The only thing easy about acrylics is the clean up, just soap and water. The easy cleaning is why I started with acrylics, but I stay with them because I’m stubborn that way. I like to control things. My desk is tidy, my cupboards and drawers are orderly, my closets sorted. This causes much comment from saner, more rational people, those who believe a tidy desk is symptom of a diseased mind. I like tidy; the impossibility of maintaining order appeals to me. My defense to friends and family is that I think a clean closet is like the soul, hidden but it ought to be beautiful. No one’s ever said this to me, but perhaps they’ve thought it, that if I spent as much time on my soul as I spend on my closets, I’d be transcendent by now.

All that is prelude to try to explain why the last week has been so painful. I’m aware now of how ill I am. The illness itself doesn’t scare me. I’m in little pain and I know from a lifetime of back trouble that pain is, well, controllable. But illness is not. I have no control over what happens to me from now on. On an intellectual level I know that I have been given a great gift—time, maybe years, to reflect and grow as an artist and a soul. Being ill focuses thinking. Introspection becomes as urgent as breathing. I know few people are given context and freedom for deep reflection. All I have to do to harvest this treasure is to relinquish the need for control.

All? Nothing I’ve ever done seems harder. I want to manage this illness, control it. But there’s nothing I can do. To grow wiser I have to accept that, let go.

Many artists who paint with acrylics use flinging techniques. They toss paint at their canvases, compose wide, wild swatches of simple colors or restrict their forms to simple shapes. They let the accident will the painting. The best way to handle acrylics is to not control them.

Thing is, I’ve never liked those sorts of paintings. I can’t see me becoming a wild-eyed, static-haired flinger. At the moment I don’t even want to try. I like control. How am I to have my control and fling it too? This is a problem. Yet as I used to tell my students, all problems have solutions.

And all solutions create new problems.

Above: Purple Hosta, acrylic on canvas, 18x24 inches. Copyright 2007 ptw