This painting had one heck of a journey.
The Backstory + Results
I remember purchasing this canvas with one idea in mind: paint my accomplished task list every day so I could see how much I completed. It was the summer of 2015, I was still in grad school, and I was struggling with a lack of motivation to tackle my mountain of a to-do list.
I ended up painting over the results because they were—as my life was at the time—too busy. The painting wasn’t pleasant to look at, and I didn’t like remembering and feeling the stress from some of the to-do items every time I looked at the painting.
I don’t have a title for this painting, but it gave me an idea for a series of paintings that depict how we often mask our emotions. You can somewhat see the chaotic texture of the original painting underneath the finished painting, but otherwise you wouldn’t know it was there.
The Process
Below is an image of this painting in progress. Although the act of painting something every day was at first relaxing, it quickly became another thing on my to-do list. I religiously added to this painting daily when I was in my grad school apartment in the summer of 2015, and continued the process many days during the rest of grad school. I used my planner to guide what went on this painting because I ended up having a back-log of tasks to add and the planner helped me keep track of which tasks needed to be added. My plan was to add all the tasks in that planner to this painting since the planner had a definitive end, which coincided with the end of my grad school experience.
I had no plans for what this would look like in the end other than I liked the idea of the texture that my process would create. Had I planned a color scheme this might have turned out less chaotic. Instead, I chose the colors and brushes based on what drew me to use them vs. comparing them to colors and shapes already present on the canvas. Some days I was too lazy to get my paints out and used a sharpie to add my finished tasks.
I took this image somewhere in the middle of this process. I added many more layers, but never took a photo of what it looked like right before I painted over it. I didn’t like the results.
A closer look
Although the entire painting was a little hard to look at, some of the parts of it were quite nice up close.
When I got closer to the end of painting my tasks on the canvas, I decided that I hated the results but wasn’t sure what to do with the painting. I started experimenting with adding different textures on top of the painting. This is what killed this painting. I would have otherwise been able to do something that allowed some of the overlapping text textures and colors to peek through, but whatever I did (I don’t remember!) totally ruined any chance of that being successful.
I think I might have added a thick acrylic medium to the paint and used my fingers to push it around…? Whatever I did totally ruined what was going on. I should have taken a step back from this piece for a while and brought it back when I wasn’t so emotionally tied to the tasks it represented. In theory I could recreate the entire thing (I still have my planner), but it wouldn’t be “authentic” because the psychological turmoil of grad school wouldn’t be present in my marks and paint choices.
Painting over the mess.
Not pictured: The middle phase where I’d painted the entire thing in shades of white.
(Yes, there are multiple shades of white!)
I knew that the painting was a dud after I ruined it with whatever I did above and the only thing to do was paint over it (because I hate wasting anything).
Looking back on the experience of painting over the mess, it was cleansing. I remember squirting entire bottles of white on the canvas and using my hands to spread it across the painting, covering all the stressful tasks. (You can see some of the finger/hand texture in the final result below.)
This painting sat around for a while in the white/clean state before I decided what to do with it. I eventually decided to use the canvas to create a calming piece for our guest room. I also wanted to experiment with using multiple colors of wet acrylic paint at the same time and let the paint decide how to blend.
I started by painting a layer of dark greens over the white and let that dry. Then I spent about an hour working with all the greens that I had in my paint collection and made markings that were calming to me as I painted.
This doesn’t have a real composition to it. It’s just calming color and calming marks over something extremely chaotic. I think if had this not had the other painting beneath it with the texture peeking out of the new painting it would be a blah and boring piece. But since it has a story, I think it’s pretty interesting.
Here’s an up-close of the textures peeking through.
I painted the edges in copper because I liked how it complemented the greens and it goes with the rest of our decor.
Some places you can almost read some of the tasks below and it’s kind of fun.
Anyway, another painting experiment in the books.
I took an abstract acrylic painting class from St. Paul Community Education this spring and I have better knowledge of using the paint and the tools now. I might give the original idea another shot to see if I can make it work, even though it’s not “authentic” anymore.
Do you make things? What do you do when you don’t like the results?
