This year I set myself a challenge to do a painting every week and see where that process led me. So far, it's been an interesting journey and the year is barely half over. I've told a few friends what I'm doing and they've asked me to share some of the images and the journal of the process, so here it is.....

I'm going in chronological order rather than putting the newest stuff at the top like a typical blog. I think it's easier to watch the process unfolding if it's not backwards.

2/20 After starting out with a representational piece that I didn't even finish, I shifted into a series of monotypes when Ron Pokrasso was here. The way Ron was working with monotypes dredged up a bunch of techniques and imagery that I was working with when I was doing clay prints. Combining the rigidity of stencils with the looseness of splashes and hand painting sets up a different dynamic on the work surface. I spent a couple of weeks finishing up monotypes that I wasn't originally happy with, by combining stencils, lithography, solar plate and both transferred and directly painted imagery.

3/01 I've ordered some Arches 88 paper to keep working with the monotype techniques Pokrasso taught, but that hasn't arrived yet, so I'm pushing that same dynamic into a series of paintings on masonite panels. These have some representational elements, but a lot of texture and abstraction. I have always liked the chaotic ground that the painting wall at Burning Man had and I am looking for ways to create that sort of chaos myself in the background layers of the painting. I'm starting with layers of pattern using some stencils and also painting some layers of color into the negative spaces that define a sort of all over network.

3/21 The "painting wall" pieces have started shifting more and more away from containing any representational elements at all into pure color and form. This brought up the kinds of sinuous forms that I was working with back at the time I did the original drawing for "Quark". I've done several of these formal color studies, and am pretty happy with where they're going.
5/4 April was sort of a lost cause for painting. Much chaos and I needed to keep the work table clear for other projects. Then Sharon emailed me a call for entry for a "mail art" show. I had just gotten a postcard from Rex, so I took that out to the studio and painted over it to create a piece for that show. Working on the post card was fun and very liberating because there was no concern about the "preciousness" of materials (similar to the experience of light box painting), so I decided to stick with the postcard thing for a while. I pulled out a stack of old postcards left over from last year's studio tour and started on a series of doodles on those, at first responding to, then reacting against the imagery on the cards. These have ended up shifting into some very interesting abstract expressionist forms using colors that are well outside my usual comfort zone.
5/5 After doing a stack of postcards, I was feeling confident with the forms and colors I was using, so I shifted back to the masonite panels and tried a few of the same kinds of images larger. To get some variety, I have tried various colors to outline the forms and then, not outlining at all, but building up washes and then leaving the forms outlines as negative space, which really ends up coming back full circle to some the layers I was painting on some of the early pieces to build up layers of "history" on the canvas to simulate the painting wall experience. Right now, I am really enjoying the abstract expressionist forms and the palette of rich earthy colors I am using. This is so far outside my usual comfort zone that it feels very invigorating. I can't wait to see what I'll paint next. I think I read a quote by Dali that he couldn't wait to get up in the morning to see what he'd do next. I think I understand what he was saying. Not only is the flow that is being created affecting the "painting a week" work itself, but there is a creative flow on several other fronts as well. I'm getting all sorts of ideas for drawings and prints and combining all sorts of techniques as well.

5/9 I did a piece last night that is incredibly loose and casual. I had just finished one piece and there was still some paint left on the palette, so I thought I'd just sketch out my next piece and clean off the leftover paint. I started out the same way I did on the last few of the abstract expressionist pieces I've done, but once I got the forms sketched in and filled in the shapes with washes of whatever color was left on the palette, I wondered how it would look to go back in with white over the negative space areas. I just slammed in some white over the washes underneath in really loose strokes. The color underneath shows through in areas and the brush strokes are really apparent. I got it to a point where I thought "Ooh, that's cool! I'll just go scan it to capture this stage and then I can take it back out to the studio and finish it." It was late, so I went home and went to bed. This morning, when I finally had time to scan it, I was looking at it and trying to decide what I would do to finish it. I honestly couldn't see a thing that it needed to be "finished". It didn't seem that anything I would do to it would improve it in any way. If I worked it over it would just end up all overworked and hackneyed. I'm taking the whole bunch over to Helena's this evening. Claudine wants to do analysis on them as if they were light box paintings. I will be interesting to see where that goes. I'm a little nervous about getting the process too conscious and blocking it.

5/30 In the end, it worked out that we didn't have time for Claudine to do the whole analysis process and I have to admit, I'm glad. I'm sure we'll do some analysis work on the bunch of them at some point, but it's all still a bit to fresh and I want to keep the freshness. It's been a couple of weeks without any painting. I've been working on a drawing for a lithograph and printing solar plates. I had several prints that I had printed proofs of and then never printed the edition, so I finished those up and then printed editions of three entirely new prints. The whole time I was printing, ideas kept going through my head for ways to incorporate the print images in with monotypes using the kinds of abstract expressionist compositions I've been working with in painting. Yesterday, I got back to painting. When I first laid out the paints and masonite panels to get started, I thought that maybe the abstract expressionist thing was getting to be a rut and that I should try to force some new direction. Then I realized that the shifts will come naturally without having to force them - the process will evolve on it's own. I'm experiencing a little bit of the same feeling with the solar plates. I keep coming back to the quirky little 5x7's and rather than being in a rut, I'm seeing the ideas evolve and grow and the whole thing is turning into a large body of work that really has a presence. I think that maybe I've hit this sort of place before. I've been so afraid of getting stale that I didn't stay with a process long enough to see it evolve and grow. Always wanting to try something new can be a way of staying fresh, or it could be an addiction.
6/12 I've had 6 pieces underway for the last couple of weeks and I've played with them in sequence, a layer at a time, rather than finishing one start to finish. This batch has evolved with more glazes and subtle coloring than the ones I've worked on for the last few months. The technique is tending to go back to the more subtle layering and color scheme of some of the first "swirly" pieces at the start of the year instead of the bold earthy color and hard edges of the first abstract expressionist pieces. I like the yummy muddiness of the color glazing, but I also liked the bold strong colors. I guess my next thing will be to see if I can incorporate both into a single piece. I do feel like I'm getting more control over color than I've ever had before.
6/14 I'm getting more layers of complexity in these and mixing the solid color and glazing techniques. It's still feeling fresh - not like I'm getting trapped in a rut, but it may be time to push the limits a bit more. Maybe try a larger canvas, or try pulling these forms into some monotypes and see what happens when I incorporate some collage or solar plate elements. I've been trying to figure out why these forms feel so "right". I just realized that they echo petroglyphs and runic and ogham alphabets. That's why they feel to me that they have such a sense of connectedness to ancient magick.
6/18 I've been working on a couple of larger pieces and pushed the materials a bit. The second piece from the left above is pretty experimental. I've been soaking the dried acrylic paint off my palette in between painting sessions and sticking it on a sheet of plastic. This was building up a really cool background of color and texture. I painted over that to fill in the color and used glazes to bring out the texture a bit more. Then I glazed the whole thing with a couple of coats of matte medium and peeled it off the plastic sheet. I did a neutral background painting on a larger sheet of masonite, then collaged the peeled acrylic sheet onto that. The far right one is on aluminum. I originally painted it on a sheet of plastic, then peeled it off and collaged it to the aluminum, but I'm not sure that I really gained anything by doing that. I probably could have painted directly on the aluminum, especially if I put a coat of acrylic varnish over it first.

8/11 I took a break for a while. There was too much going on - company and what-not - and once I got out of the habit of painting almost every day, it was hard to get back to it. Then I suddenly got inspired to finish a triptych I had started years ago. I'd gotten about half done with it and felt lost and couldn't go any further, so it's been languishing in a corner of the studio for at least three years. When I started back to work on it, things really flowed (and in a different direction than I had originally planned when I started it). The "painting a week" discipline has definitely made a difference in the way I paint. I've got a couple of "weeklies" started now, so I'm back to it!
8/19 I'm back in the flow again and it feels great. I got in a bit of a funk after coming home from Autreat. Partly decompression from coming out of such a great experience and partly just because I got out of the routine of painting every day and couldn't get back into it. There were three calls for entry with deadlines tomorrow and I decided to do new work for two of them, so that got me out to the studio. Having these small formal studies to work on is a great way to stop myself from picking at a larger painting that needs to be left alone to dry for a while. I'm playing with some collage along with painting and I like what's happening. I find that I'm feeling more freedom to play and just see what happens. Finishing that triptych has given me more confidence in trusting my process.