Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Lesson Learned: "Deluge After Drought"

Here is a piece I struggled with for quite some time.  It has quite a few more layers of various papers and paint than I frequently use in my work, and at several stages in it's creation, looked quite different than it looks, above, in it's final incarnation.  At times, I thought that I had "overworked" parts of it, and I also kept fighting the urge to give the piece a strong focal point of some kind (even in my non-objective artwork, like this piece, there is usually some sort of center-of-interest), as I really wanted to focus on texture, pattern, and repetition, here.  I put the unfinished piece away for a month or more, and thought about elements that would bring the piece more in line with the mental image I had of it.  When I hauled it out, again to work on it, I only ended up changing things slightly by adding several new elements to the composition.  Having done so, I knew it was complete.  Lesson learned: giving a piece I am working on some time, by putting it away and leaving it an unfinished state for awhile, helps me to process, and can actually give the artwork the space and time it needs, as well, to tell me what needs to happen next!