{"id":1256,"date":"2012-03-18T21:42:23","date_gmt":"2012-03-18T21:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=1256"},"modified":"2012-03-19T10:11:56","modified_gmt":"2012-03-19T10:11:56","slug":"slow-and-steady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=1256","title":{"rendered":"Slow and steady"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Four Plums<\/p><\/div>\n

Four Plums<\/em> is an oil-on-linen still life I\u2019m going to show in the fall at Oxford Gallery, in a two-person show, the first I\u2019ve had there. It\u2019s the sort of thing I want to keep doing as I build a portfolio of work specifically for that show. I\u2019m under the gun a bit, yet I\u2019m changing the way I work as part of my effort to present the best work I can do. I\u2019ve replaced some economy paint with a more expensive line, and I\u2019ve noticed a real difference in the way the paint handles, but I\u2019m still not sure if it\u2019s the quality of the paint or simply the fact that it\u2019s new. The other tubes were getting old, since I use fairly thin layers of oil and a tube can last me years–if it\u2019s a color I don’t favor. If it\u2019s several years old, it thickens and gets harder to use without some dicey thinning. Yet buying the new paint, using better materials, was only part of a\u00a0 larger commitment I\u2019m making to this show in the fall. I\u2019m also resigning myself to taking whatever more time than I might have devoted in the past to finishing\u00a0 a painting properly. What I\u2019m finding is that when I surrender to the natural pace of a given painting, as a way of committing to the best possible outcome, the act of painting will flow the way it should, and I\u2019ll feel more secure about the results as I paint\u2014because I don\u2019t move forward until I\u2019m satisfied with the work I\u2019m doing at the time. I might go back to that area again and again, but if I\u2019m as careful and accurate with it as I can be, from the start<\/em>, it sets me up for more effective finishing touches later on. I’m not saying I was doing rushed work in the past, but sometimes I would ignore frustration and plow ahead, forcing things, instead of listening to my reactions. I guess all I’m saying is that I’m working in a way that feels more natural to me, rather than trying to paint with a method some other painters I know are using.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s some deep connection between the tactile feel of applying paint, in a way where each brush stroke brings a little ping of satisfaction, partly because it\u2019s so carefully considered, that conveys some hard-to-quantify freshness and life in the finished work. It doesn\u2019t make much logical sense that the feel<\/em> of the activity results in a more convincing look, but that’s what I keep discovering, over the years, and then repeatedly ignoring, when I\u2019m under pressure or impatient to be done. I am putting myself under a self-imposed deadline here, which motivates me to work faster, because I\u2019m hoping to contribute a couple dozen paintings to the show, which means, ideally, I\u2019d like to create maybe eighteen new paintings. I\u2019ve already finished a few, but I still have more than a dozen to paint between now and September. I can do the math and I know how much time I have for each one. Yet it seems that I need to forget the deadlines and try to do only what a good, careful pace requires, which threatens to slow me way down. Here\u2019s the paradox, in the image I\u2019m working on now, of a ceramic bowl, when I slow down and forget about how much of the image I want to finish on a given day\u2014and just focus on getting every stroke done properly, every color applied after long consideration\u2014I begin to see how what I\u2019m doing in one area can be duplicated in another, I spot parallels between a color or value in one part of the object and other parts, and I find myself getting more done than I expected. By ignoring the clock, I discover efficiencies that actually save<\/em> time. By slowing down, I speed the process. Not always, but I seem to remember a line from the band Genesis<\/em> back in the 70s: you gotta get in to get out<\/em>. Something like that seems to be operating in this surrender to the required pace of the work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four Plums is an oil-on-linen still life I\u2019m going to show in the fall at Oxford Gallery, in a two-person show, the first I\u2019ve had there. It\u2019s the sort of thing I want to keep doing as I build a portfolio of work specifically for that show. I\u2019m under the gun a bit, yet I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSlow and steady - represent<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=1256\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Slow and steady - represent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Four Plums is an oil-on-linen still life I\u2019m going to show in the fall at Oxford Gallery, in a two-person show, the first I\u2019ve had there. 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