FMP Painting Three

Final Major Project Painting # 3

Further Explorations into Memory Through Shapes and Space in Abstraction

I really wanted to create something that would be reminiscent of Brazil. My life in Brazil took up a large chunk of my childhood and lives in my memories, influencing me for the rest of my life.

When I recall different places, I often remember and associate them with color. To me, brazil is bright, colorful, tropical and full of life. I wanted to explore deep and lush greens to represent the more organic and jungly aspects of Brazil. Alongside these I would utilize warm toned /orangey reds to represent the vibrant cultural aspects of brazil. This would be a painting to represent my memories of Brazil. I intended to approach the painting similarly to the last two, in terms of abstraction, and I sought to work with more floating and interacting shapes and forms which could represent place, but were not clearly defined as such.

So far I like the washes of color, and blues flowing into greens. I didn't hate the red, but I was struggling to appreciate the ochre color in the middle. I thought the definition of the shapes here were too extreme, and needed to be softened or broken up somehow.

I wanted to deepen some of the colors here and offer a subtler hue of the same red which was dominating the center. While I did like the way this complicated the painting, I felt I had lost some of the original layers of colors which had some beautiful texture to it.

I began introducing some of my usual themes here involving loose representation of place and structure. Some windows and doors, and other architectural elements pieced together. I applied some patchwork painting of blue hues, and while I liked the way the colors in these specific areas turned out, I did not find them successful as a whole. Some of the painting has lost clarity, in a bad way and began to look too busy. Perhaps this could have been remedied with greater sweeps of solid color.

Because I felt I had introduced too much blue and darkness, I decided to try and reintroduce greens to the canvas, brightening it up. I also applied a light wash of golden yellow to the left bit of canvas I had kept raw. I believe both of these moves were a mistake. I don't feel the colors were working harmoniously together, something about them seemed to have taken too much vibrance, and the layers of washes which I typically like to show, had begun to oversaturate with color, which took away some of the textures I find interesting. There is a cut-and-pasted feel to the painting emerging that is not subtle, and does not seem to work here.

Day Three

This is the first instance where I feel bringing white into the canvas has become useful. I think I was able to achieve some nice texture with the wider brush strokes applied here. There was something about the large shape on the left I found unsettling, but I was unsure how to remedy this. The shape in the bottom left hand corner felt particularly uncoordinated to me. The sharpness of the edge needed to be tamed.

This is probably my favorite place this painting came to, and looking back I wish I had stopped here. Unfortunately I decided to continue working on it, unsatisfied with some of the shapes I had achieved. To do this I painted large pieces of paper in various shapes and pinned them up against the painting, trying to determine where improvements could be made or shapes could be added (pictured below).

This is where the painting really began to fail beyond repair. After playing around with the different shapes on top of the canvas I decided to go in with some gesso, to try and bring some parts of the canvas to a blank starting point.

In doing this I lost all remains of the initial textures and colors that were actually successful in the painting. Now this is where the painting went really wrong. I decided to go in with some fresh shapes and bright colors, to try and revive the overworked canvas.

There are elements of the new shapes and space that I do like, particularly some of the thicker drawing and line work in deeper colors. Despite this, the uglier, muddied, and overworked canvas shined through underneath the newer, successful aspects and overshadowed them. I decided at this point the painting couldn't be saved.

Although in the end I found this painting to be unsuccessful as a whole and do not intend to show it, I did learn a lot from the process. This was a great reminder to take my time with each piece. Approach it as I have said before, with a lighter touch. I found it is important to know when to leave a painting. I have always had a tendency to overwork things, not letting them go when they don't appear to be working. This never results in success, as demonstrated here. I still think I could extract some of the shapes from this painting and carry them into another painting. I think I could also maybe cut up this painting, and create a canvas collage with it.