I’ve managed to keep my 100-day project afloat. My goal was to create abstract works using the torn remains of other pieces as a way to explore themes of building, destroying, and rebuilding.
At first, my experiments were a little cautious and had a lot of negative space in them.
However, I bought more ink and started to experiment with dripping, staining, smearing, and then letting the pages dry to use either as backgrounds or torn pieces.
About half-way through my first two weeks, I also met with my artist group for a little feedback on what I’d done so far. Two revelations came from that meeting.
Number one; darker, more varied backgrounds seem to open up more possibilities than just starting with a white ground. Number two; I should take some kind of small frame and visually isolate just the parts I like the best and use those sections to generate more paintings.
I immediately tried to incorporate the first piece of advice. As a result, the backgrounds have gotten much more messy – spattered, stained, dripped. It’s a lot of fun. I have not yet incorporated the second piece of advice but I hope to take some time this weekend to look over everything I’ve generated thus far and plan some new pieces based on the old ones and see where that takes me.
In the meantime, something unexpected resulted from this.
Because there is so much pressure to make something every day, I’ve had to take some supplies with me when I leave the house so I can improvise at work or in a coffee shop in between appointments. I was reminded how much a change of scenery can change the work itself. For the time being, this “look” seems to be the new direction for my work:
I also love this new direction because I’ve successfully (at least I think so) integrated some elements of visual language I’m developing, so that it doesn’t seem like a total break from what has come before…. At least that’s my opinion. What do you think?
Follow my Instagram to see how this project is going day-to-day!
pithandrootstudio.com 