Week 111

Taking a shot from a beach in Santa Barbara, we decided to transform it into a huge, unusual painting! The new format was exciting and so different! After sketching our scene, we put a Monet up on our screen ( instead of our original image ) for inspiration in technique. 

As an artist, you don’t always know what you are going to do. Sometimes it is well thought out, meticulously planned and executed. But many times you need to let the painting guide you and leave some things up to “happy accidents” as Bob Ross would say. Laert began painting with this in mind, doing what was in his brain, letting the painting move him. That left me with no (original) image to go from and no clearly agreed on palette. 

The parts that I did do, were redone in his fashion. The free scraffito net that shimmered around the fisherman ashore, was painted over. This is one night where it felt one-sided and incredibly frustrating. I can’t blame us for getting irritated because were two minds trying to work as one which sometimes works seamlessly (scratch that - it’s never quite seamless)! But most days we get on a rhythm and we find a path together where we have a better understanding. Today wasn’t one of those days. It felt like everything I tried to do seemed to be not part of his vision for it. The result is so very beautiful but foreign to me as I feel like my voice was lost. 

There’s a submission that is required in order to do something like what we do together, and many times it is both of us bending and swaying. I have many thoughts in my head, dreams and ideas but less practice and execution means that I sometimes default to his. Defaulting adds to my frustration in not being able to execute it as I want. 

While painting He said to “be messy, be free”. I felt messy but not free. In the morning light however, I saw it. I saw the woman I was the night before, like a sail billowed out, trying something, fighting for something. Looking back, even in unfamiliarity, I do see myself, my strokes and my heart and the presence of someone determined to be there. It is in the process (which is not exclusively about a winning result), it’s in the messiness of vulnerability, exploration and expression in which that freedom is actually found. 

Of a beautiful result I am proud, but mostly that on this side of weathering the depths of all feelings, I feel as unfettered as this Regatta. 

Regatta

95x8 | Oil on Wood