Thursday 10 AM (Laundry Room, London)
36 × 48 × 1.5 inches, oil on linen
I spent much of the year traveling through Europe, looking at paintings I had been teaching about for more than thirty years. I had a lot of expectations about that trip. Some of the art moved me in ways I hadn’t expected. There were also unfamiliar rooms, ordinary chores, and stretches of time when I wasn’t quite sure where I belonged. You still have to wash your clothes.
I’ve been thinking about laundry rooms and hotel rooms as liminal spaces. Places you occupy temporarily, somewhere between one thing and another. In this painting, the figure settles onto a yellow bench while the laundry runs. His body is in the room, but his attention is on his phone. There’s the place he physically occupies and another place he’s participating in through the screen. I’m interested in that experience of being in two places at once.
These ideas have become part of Self Directed. Aging is a universal process, although each of us experiences it differently. Coming to terms with it is an ongoing part of my thinking and the development of my iconography, the figures, gestures, objects, and spaces that keep turning up in my paintings. I’m using situations from my own life to think about our bodies, our place in the world, and how we spend our time. Getting older has also given me more freedom to decide what I want to paint.
The color takes a lot of preparation. I premix colors and work out formulas to help me get past color constancy, our tendency to see the familiar color of an object despite changes in light and surroundings. A white washing machine contains a lot of other colors. I’m working out how those grays, blues, and reflected yellows relate to one another. The cool machines and clothing sit against the warmth of the walls and bench. Their repeated circles and rectangles give me a structure for the long diagonal of the body.
I vary the surface as I work. Some passages have paint troweled on thickly. Others are thinner, and I leave parts of the underdrawing showing through. Those differences create variation and let you see something of how the painting developed. I want the decisions, the drawing, and the physical handling of the paint to remain visible in the finished work.
This is an original oil painting on linen, 36 × 48 inches. The linen supports both the thinner passages and the heavier buildup of paint. It can be displayed without a frame.
Thursday 10 AM (Laundry Room, London)
36 × 48 × 1.5 inches, oil on linen
I spent much of the year traveling through Europe, looking at paintings I had been teaching about for more than thirty years. I had a lot of expectations about that trip. Some of the art moved me in ways I hadn’t expected. There were also unfamiliar rooms, ordinary chores, and stretches of time when I wasn’t quite sure where I belonged. You still have to wash your clothes.
I’ve been thinking about laundry rooms and hotel rooms as liminal spaces. Places you occupy temporarily, somewhere between one thing and another. In this painting, the figure settles onto a yellow bench while the laundry runs. His body is in the room, but his attention is on his phone. There’s the place he physically occupies and another place he’s participating in through the screen. I’m interested in that experience of being in two places at once.
These ideas have become part of Self Directed. Aging is a universal process, although each of us experiences it differently. Coming to terms with it is an ongoing part of my thinking and the development of my iconography, the figures, gestures, objects, and spaces that keep turning up in my paintings. I’m using situations from my own life to think about our bodies, our place in the world, and how we spend our time. Getting older has also given me more freedom to decide what I want to paint.
The color takes a lot of preparation. I premix colors and work out formulas to help me get past color constancy, our tendency to see the familiar color of an object despite changes in light and surroundings. A white washing machine contains a lot of other colors. I’m working out how those grays, blues, and reflected yellows relate to one another. The cool machines and clothing sit against the warmth of the walls and bench. Their repeated circles and rectangles give me a structure for the long diagonal of the body.
I vary the surface as I work. Some passages have paint troweled on thickly. Others are thinner, and I leave parts of the underdrawing showing through. Those differences create variation and let you see something of how the painting developed. I want the decisions, the drawing, and the physical handling of the paint to remain visible in the finished work.
This is an original oil painting on linen, 36 × 48 inches. The linen supports both the thinner passages and the heavier buildup of paint. It can be displayed without a frame.
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