Painting With No Meaning

“What does it mean?” That is probably one of the top ten questions people ask when they look at a painting. Certainly not all paintings must have ‘a meaning’. Some paintings are to be felt, others are interpretations of nature, and others are just a way for the artist to deliver a technique for personal amusement and practice. Painting with no meaning is very satisfying indeed.  All you want to do is to enjoy the process. If someone else finds meaning to it and likes it is a plus.

In my last studio days of 2014 I did just that: painting to explore a technique and have fun. I am a sculptor and prefer sculpting much more than painting. However, I enjoy painting from time to time. I approach painting the way I approach sculpting. I begin with the pose. I work on basic shapes and then work smaller areas until I ‘build’ the figure. I am not looking for meaning or some intellectual and spiritual awakening. I just study the figure. I try to understand the intricacies of the muscles and their reaction to movement. It is delightful to observe how muscles expand, stretch, and contract. You can feel it in your own body.

The process begins by tracing that pose I want to explore. I trace just the lines with paint. I love lines. I apply some shading as a guide. ‘Filling’ the figure with color helps provides a foundation on which I will shade and form the muscles. For me is very important to follow the fiber of the muscle with my brushstrokes. It provides a sense of volume. It also helps to accurately shape the anatomy. Before I work on the details of the anatomy I try to surround the figure with color as in providing a setting (which is generally empty space for me but it provides visual sense). The surrounding colors also help me decide the colors for shading the figure.

Detailing the muscles is very challenging but so much fun. I work one small area at a time and connect the muscles until the figure is complete. Hair comes after. To add a little something to the composition I added flowers this time. I was going in different directions with the flowers once I added the blue roses (which were originally purple) close to the head. First, and that was the original idea, I wanted to create a ‘u’ shaped frame of flowers and vines on the bottom half of the canvas. It was too much for me. The next idea was to just add a few flowers closing the figure at the bottom. I was not feeling it either, so I left it like that with just three blue roses. The rest is about cleaning up the details. After about 12 hours I was very satisfied with the result.