Nothing… again
Last week’s painting in the One Painting Per Week For A Year project is the “simplest” yet… just a specific shade of blue. This particular shade was a tough one to photograph, and not completely simple to obtain on the canvas. There are about a dozen layers of paint on this… and, the absence of any other mark on the composition was a decision that I fought for much of the latter half of the week. I love pure color panels that have a vibration… sure, countless painters have done it before, and done it very well. The impulse all last week was to add a border or some simple symbol to lend the piece a little bit of dimensionality. Alas, I opted this time for the purity of color. Is it “successful?” There’s not a right answer to that question, in my opinion. Last summer, I executed a painting titled, Nothing, for an exhibit of works that utilized cardboard in their production. I burned the cardboard and used the ash and linseed oil to create a stain that I applied in layers to the canvas. The finished “image” was magical to me, and I have wanted to return to the idea of nothing. I, oftentimes, feel like my mind has been hacked by the effects of the internet and social media… So, a pure blue canvas usually seems like a viable remedy to the overstimulated head space. Anyways, I hope to have the next canvas photographed and posted in a more timely manner. Six down, forty-six to go.