I thought there were ten paintings. There are really five. Without the experimenting, I wouldn’t have realised this. Without trying to force a painting, I wouldn’t have learned not to. Without admitting that the series was starting to feel more like a chore than honest expression, I would not have made the discovery I needed to make.
Five paintings. An odd number for a series. Most of us humans like even numbers in series. Five is off-kilter. It’s in motion, leading to the harmony of an even number, but, in the case of this series, never delivering. One expects a sixth painting and will look for it. There is a desire for harmony and completion that is not fulfilled. Like waiting (hoping) for remission.
I could force a sixth painting the way I forced RAI #2. That was a mistake. Everything went wrong. I spent a few days thinking about it, wondering how I could fix it. I realised this morning that there was no need to fix it because there was no need for the painting at all. It was overkill. RAI #1 said everything that needed saying.
I knew that something bigger had been bugging me with the series. Some of the paintings were definitely forced from the start because I wanted an even number. But the even number would be too calm and too resolved and that had been bothering me for weeks without me even knowing it. A series has to be an even number, some OCD override in my head kept saying. But why? What I feel at the moment is not resolution, not in terms of my health anyway. As I have painted, I have tried to get at the root of my emotions concerning my cancer. Giving myself the freedom and space and time to make more paintings has shown me what seems true and what seems false. I do not want to include untrue or phoned-in paintings in this series. Not because I have any lofty plans for it, but because I would feel like I had cheated myself.
Besides, I have a feeling that the stucco is for the next series, The Teds.
Filed under: painting
So some of my experiments with duct tape and chicken wire in this series are not working out. First, the duct tape in France has adhesive that simply cannot stand up to humidity. I grew up with good ol’ amerkin duct tape that can be used to fix hoses as well as build wallets and possibly skyscrapers. I needed French duct tape to be the same. Since all I demanded of it was to stick to itself and some chicken wire, I thought, ‘No problem!’, but, as it turns out, problem.
In Machine #1 and Machine #2, my use of duct tape has also not panned out the way I’d like. Bubbletastique. Not what I was going for. The intended effect was smooth, plasticine hardness that air pockets just don’t seem to communicate.
The good in all this is that I experimented. I tried something that popped into my head and, in doing so, got a better feel for the rhythm of the series as it plays out from painting to painting. Thanks to my goof ups, I will have a solid series of paintings that work together or can stand alone and that are wide open.
Filed under: painting
Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.
So apparently there are ten paintings in the Thyca Series. News to me!
Did give me the excuse to get a 3″ Liquitex Freestyle Paddle Brush. I kind of love it.
In late May 2010, a non-representational painting came to me unbidden. At the time, I was preparing for radioactive iodine treatment. I had no thyroid and had had to stop my T4 treatment so that the isotopes could bind to the cancerous cells and kill them. Not having any T4 in your system can kill you. Your heart starts beating more and more slowly until it is literally lurching. You start weeping for no reason. You know there’s no reason, but you feel so sad. It is almost impossible to control the tears. Thoughts begin to get darker and darker.
In the midst of that near delirium, my mind’s eye projected an abstract painting on the bedroom ceiling. I say it was non-representational in that it didn’t represent any physical thing that I could look at and draw. However, it did represent exactly what being on the extreme side of hypothyroid felt like for me in that moment. No painting had ever sprung into being for me that way. I had bigger fish to fry, so I tucked the idea away in a corner of my mind.
About a year later, maybe exactly a year later, my doctors told me that they wanted to hold off on a third surgery and a third radiation treatment (this time, the external kind). A week after I got that letter, I woke up at around 5AM with seven more paintings in my brain for eight in all. The eight included the first that, though I had almost totally forgotten about it consciously, was still there. It began what I am calling the Thyca Series.
I am now doing studies. This seems a bit silly as I am using el cheapo cotton canvas and acrylic paint that I can just paint over if I don’t like a result. But the studies are turning out to be very useful for processing and getting back into the practice of painting. Setting up my water buckets, my towels, soaking my brushes…defining my work space is like setting up a stage and painting is like watching a really powerful play. It is exceptionally therapeutic for me and I remember as I paint what I felt like in art class as a little kid. Free. Totally free. Completely forgetting all the bad shit of normal life and going to my happy right brain space for awhile.
When I get stuck on a painting (Hyper #2 has been a bit of a bother), my brain keeps working away at it — even when I am asleep. This week, I have woken up at 4:20AM twice with new ideas for Hyper #2 and for Bonne Dose #1. Better ideas. What this whole process has taught me is not to rush art. Gestation periods are different for different pieces and for different people, and I need to find a way to respect that more consistently.
