Here’s where I share my ideas about writing, art, design, and the conditions necessary for creativity. Peek into my portfolios, collect my whimsical art, or just follow along as I chronicle my studio practice.
¶ fresh ink
I’ve been creating fast and furious, for two different workshops (in retrospect probably better not to double up this way) and, really, a surprising number of the paintings have been successful. I’ve shared many of them here and on my Flickr feed.
And then there are the ones with the ugly colors, sloppy lines, the overly-grungy textures, and an overall hang-dog expression of I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-I’m-doing-and-what-was-I-thinking?
Like this one, for example:
Night Flowers,
collage, watercolor, gesso, charcoal, white ink, and Chartpak marker on canvas,
10 x 8 inches, © 2012 by Lisa Firke
But, Lisa, (I hear you murmuring), it’s not your best piece, but it’s not that bad. Thank you. That’s nice of you. And I know it’s not that bad. There are some parts I really like. Those kookie badminton birdie flowers, for instance. I like those and I like that some are facing up and some down, willy-nilly.
But there are too many of them and they are too close together. The colors are interesting but not as fresh or fun as they would have been if I’d stopped at any of the dozen or so stopping places before the point when I actually stopped. The white ink rescues the thing from being completely bleak and downright ugly, but I needed a different approach to applying the ink, one that didn’t pool and spread as much as working right from the dropper did. And so on. I have a long list of what’s wrong with this painting.
And that’s when the real failure creeps in. It’s a failure of self-talk, where I take too much to heart the defects I observe in the work and feel like one faltering piece makes all of my work no good.
It’s a failure of perspective.
Time to clean the studio and try something else.
