When is the END the END....

In my painting practice, there are two challenges I work daily to improve.  The one I will address right now is ,,,,"when is it time to stop?"  I seesaw back and forth between adding detail after detail and being a minimalist.  It has been interesting to note that often when I have belabored minute details for what seems like days (for sure it is HOURS,) I often receive comments about how "loose" my work is or how "free" my style is.  In my mind this is often a definition issue and not a style issue.

Liz Sivertson, in a recent workshop in Grand Marais, MN, talked about quality of a work being "painterly."  As she demonstrated her process on a painting, she further clarified her meaning of "painterly" and how she tries to apply this process to her own work.  What follows is my interpretation of her explanation.

Painterly work is not the duplication of a photograph or precise image to render it a copy of the original image.  A painterly image has artist's interpretation created through the use of medium and the application of that material to the substrate of choice (i.e. the paper, canvas, masonite, etc.)  The challenge then, for the artist, is NOT in the accurate representation of the image, but in the use of medium, tools, and substrate surface to capture the personal image interpretation in a way that the viewer may evoke a thought, mood, emotion, feeling, etc.  This is no easy challenge, and as difficult, if not more so, than to duplicate the image. 

On June 25, I posted an example of a quick painting I did to capture a roadside deer as I traveled north.  I added painterly attributes (such as the stars in the sky and large, leafy blades of grass, ) but was not satisfied with the final image.  Since I am trying to be very conscious of "...when is the end the end..." I decided to stop the quick painting and move on.  Well.......I had to return to the painting - using the word "quick" did not give me the permission to leave the work as I had hoped for.  Although I wanted the deer to be painterly, I wanted her to be more deer-like in shape and color.  I also wanted her to be more visible behind the tall blade of grass....I think it helps convey the deers naivety to think that she can't be seen because she is standing very still.  So, not just painterly, but emoting deerness.....OMG.....way too intellectual, ah?????????  Look below to see the revisions. 

Acrylic on gessoboard - Roadside deer revisions BUT still very "painterly!"  Great word Liz!