Part 1 of this series is here.
So, last time I started talking about my current slump, and my decision to look backwards to the time when I was at my most productive,and I gave a bit of the important history lesson about my girlfriend at that time, Whitney.
Mixed Sketches
This time, we’ll move on more to the creative process and how I settled on the Monocle Series as the thing to move me past my troubles.
Once I knew I wanted to revisit my past, I did what any artist would probably do– I pulled out a giant stack of sketchbooks and started leafing through them. Throughout college, I always had at least one sketchbook on me at all times. I don’t actually recall ever using a lined notebook my entire collegiate run. Some people have notes with doodles in the margins, I have doodles with notes in the white space (which is hell on composition, FYI).
So, I went through several sketchbooks, and I started tearing out any ideas I’d had but not done, so I could tape them up on my wall. And, I started coming across the doodles Whit had left me in a few of them. And of course, it was an instant nostalgia trip that took me straight back to everything things were at the time (or, at least the closest my memory can reconstruct. I’m well aware memories are notorious liars and that that which we don’t skew out of nostalgia our brains probably do just because they’re too lazy to remember the actual details when generic memory constructs will do just fine. But I digress).
Another Sketch
So, I started tearing them out too. And, at the end, I sat looking at some of my sketches, and some of hers, and the appeal was definitely in the memory conduit her sketches opened up. While some of mine could probably shape up into fine enough paintings, her sketches achieved what I was looking for: they reminded me of what it was like to be me back then. Sure, they did it by reminding me what I loved, and not what I was doing, but the effect was undeniable and strong either way.
So, what I decided to do was start with her sketches, but to reclaim the images through my own visual style, to try to match her imagination with how I would do the same subjects. Basically, I wanted to reunite who I am as an artist with how I got here, to bridge this odd wall of fear I have that everything needs to be Big, Important, Serious, or Layered. I wanted a shortcut back to thinking in nonsense and to being fearless, and, since I’ve lost my own edge at this, I opted to lean on the past like a crutch.
So, I grabbed a few paintings that had been lingering in a state of not working at all, and I painted clean surfaces back onto them. At that moment I’d had a board up on the easel I’d been trying to work ideas out on as I went, the last of which was a return to a storyboarded format (I’d set through the notebooks in part to find memories to storyboard out). And, I started using these hodge-podged, reappropriated boards to create a series of nonsense paintings. And everyone would get a monocle, because monocles are classy. And awesome. And, well, because I felt like it.
Reclaimed Canvas, "Lurk" Series
Reclaimed Canvas, "We Search For Another" Series
Reclaimed Canvas, "Grumps" Series
And that was the goal, after all, to reclaim painting into something I did just because I wanted to. Next time, we’ll start looking at tackling using someone else’s sketches while trying to remain cognizant of it as their work, and how to solve the dilemma of reinterpreting or reclaiming, and not just copying (a titchy subject on the best of days, especially right now).