New Horizons

I took a year off to work with cold wax and oil paint. I bought myself a year-long online course with Jerry McLaughlin and Rebecca Crowell because their paintings and techniques looked and sounded fascinating. I decided I wanted to tap this new possibility and see where I would end up.

To begin with, I was bewildered. They talked about ‘developing your visual language’. I discovered I didn’t have one. At least not the kind they were talking about, involving texture and subtle effects achieved through the myriad techniques they described in their book ‘Cold Wax Medium’ and in their talks. I was used to painting from reference photos, drawing from life, always with a reference point before me that I would try to stay very true to. They weren’t doing anything like that. I wanted to be them.

I made alot of awful paintings. Some of them I was thrilled by, some I hated looking at, some made it into art shows as finalists! Some I actually even sold. It was clear that something was definitely right with the new things I was doing. There was definitely potential.

I decided to get serious about watching all the online material I had access to through the course I had bought. I kept working. I kept watching Jerry and Rebecca, listening to them dissecting paintings, watching them work whenever I could find something online, listening to Rebecca’s podcast ‘The Messy Studio’ every chance I could. They made me feel more confident about what I could do and what I was already doing. I realised I needed to listen to professionals talking about their art, other people’s art, galleries, shows, the art business. I realised I was doing okay and I just needed to keep working and keep showing my work every chance I could.

Now, three-quarters of the way through the year, I find I am doing things very differently. I have been working on a series of paintings that all depict a solitary, pensive figure. Producing a series, a ‘body’ of work was also a suggestion made by Jerry in one of his talks. I see the wisdom in it now. I see the earliest paintings I made, and I see what I am doing now. I am looking at so many more things now. I am looking at shapes, colour, unity, spontaneity, movement, texture, light and shadow, emotion. I am not fixated on depiciting what I am painting exactly as it exists. Instead I find myself having to resolve problems that have to do with a balance or a unity of colour, a balance of shapes, a focal point etc. It isn’t that these were not things I didn’t have to work with before. The difference now is that I am not relaying a scene or a concept exactly as it presents itself but instead trying to re-think and re-invent it. It seems like I may have developed something of a visual language of my own.

This year I have only worked this way with the human figure. But I feel I am at the end of my exploration with these. I feel ready to take these techniques in another direction now. Working on these paintings has freed me to using unconventional implements in unconventional ways. It has made me view things differently. I feel ready to apply these same techniques to my landscapes and still life paintings now. I am convinced that this will take me closer to where I have dreamt of being for several years now in terms of more textured, looser painting that still retains the core principles of representational art.