What is it about rough studies that seem so free and spontaneous? Maybe the fact that they are free and spontaneous. But then why can’t I keep that same looseness in a final painting? I begin a painting with a black pencil sketch, usually on brown wrapping paper. After correcting lines, I work up a drawing in pastels on board or paper to get a sense of the coloring. Then I render the painting on canvas with acrylics or oils or often both.
The drawing may take an hour or two, the pastel study a day or two, and the painting a month or two. Maybe this is the crux of the problem. The more time I give to something the less spontaneity it contains. I think I need to make paintings as quickly as my studies because my time is dwindling.
Like everyone, I’ve been taught that the central message of life is to live every day as if it were my last. Or my first. A quick scan of any quotations reference turns up tons of variations on this motif; one database I looked at had eight-five pages of wise living two-liners. A sampling (from www.quotegarden.com):
- Live the present moment wisely. Siddhartha
- Carpe Diem. Seize the day. Keats or Flaccus (or both)
- In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. Lincoln
- There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want. Calvin and Hobbes
- We’re always getting ready to live but never living. Emerson
- Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you. Dillard
- Sit on the grass; don’t worry about the stains. Bombeck
That last was easily the wisest snippet I came across. But all the quips say the same thing, that life is too easily diluted. If I’ve nodded in lifelong agreement to this philosophy, I have just as noddingly spent that life unwisely, awash in distorted priorities. With future time shrinking, it ought to be easier for me to focus on the nothing I want and seize my days. But spending time on present moments is just as hard as it ever was.
At least now I want to try harder. Being spontaneous matters if for no other reason than it’s efficient. My goal with this painting, Three Tulips, then, will be to try as hard as I can to make the final painting as exuberant as the pastel study. I owe it to my disappearing future to learn to live present moments well, with an abundance of stains. We shall see if I succeed. I’ll post the finished painting here when it is done.
Above: study for Three Tulips, pastel on paper. Copyright 2009 ptw.
Note: I’m taking two weeks off; will return on January 10. Happy holidays everyone and thanks for reading!
