Carl Jung wrote that “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”
Over the past six months I have been working on about forty new paintings, in which I have begun to feel my way back into a more playful and experimental approach. The new work has the silent spaciousness of my Arctic paintings but is a return to my roots in abstracted landscape. It has felt energizing to reconnect with that earlier way of working – one in which I have little idea where the painting is going or what might emerge.
Here are a few thoughts about what that process looks like.
I work best in bursts, with multiple canvases of different shapes and sizes on the go at once - up to four begun each day until I feel enough are underway. I then come back to the first, having not seen it for perhaps a month, and work through the whole series again in roughly the order I began them. And then again. And so on.
I try to pay attention to what is already on the canvas and tune in to what might be wanting to emerge. With the mark making techniques I use much is outside my control and that often leads to the unexpected, which can have its own beauty and presence.
Given the sense of spacious stillness of the finished paintings, people are often surprised to learn that my process is not slow or meditative in the way you might imagine. I work fast, and sometimes with a ferocity that surprises me. There is very little sitting and pondering. Decisions tend to come quickly; and when they don't, I put the painting away until its turn comes around again. Sometimes I feel like I am rushing.
The early stages take a lot more out of me both physically and emotionally. The later ones, require a different kind of energy – a more subtle and precise adjusting and refinement - but still carried out with intensity and speed. Two or three hours in the studio at that point is more than enough for me.
One of the great benefits of working with a large number of pictures at once is that it eases the pressure. Many canvases in progress at once makes it easier for me to be playful, take risks, and embrace the unknown. Many end up in the bin.
I am increasingly drawn by the idea of being less and less in control. For, as Edgar Degas said, “Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.”
