A Look into the Creative Process Due to the nature of my painting process, I typically do not post my newest paintings until the end of the current year or the beginning of the following year. Most of my finished paintings emerge after I paint over other paintings I have done. I have found it helpful to layer paintings this way, sometimes keeping parts of older paintings visible, sometimes discarding everything but the texture of the painting underneath. I often use the original painting to add depth and ambivalence to the emotion in the newer painting by creating tension in the contrasting layers of colors and textures. For example, in Beneath the Surface (2015), the underlying paintings are bright, violent, and energetic, and I allow those colors to show through the pale surface of the finished painting to signal the turbulence roiling beneath it. I see paintings that come through this layering process as the culmination of a succession of feelings/paintings and the struggle within the self to come to terms with a difficult situation. Within the painting exists a dialogue of superimposed and partially blended images. When I want to show an initial emotional reaction before it has been altered by censorship and arguments, I avoid layering one painting over another, as I did with Not the First Time (2007). Occasionally, I complete a painting within a few days, but more often, they evolve over several months, sometimes even years, passing through many intermediary equilibrium points, where I temporarily feel that they are finished, before finally reaching completion. I have started experimenting with mixed media, as well as with carving, ripping, and tearing the fabric of the paintings with an Exacto knife and my bare hands, adding more sculptural elements as my work continues to explore issues of relationships, identity, truth, existence, emotional reality, and knowledge. |