Helping myself
Recently, I added a new offering to my pricelist: the miniature portrait. It might seem like perfect timing, adding an option to the affordable end of my commission spectrum just in time for the art market’s recession, but my miniatures have nothing at all to do with the economy. I don’t believe all the noise made by art business coaches: proposing a product at a lower price point is not the key to making sales in a recession. In my experience, patrons are either bigger art buyers or smaller art buyers, and it’s their taste that dictates size not their pocketbooks.
No, my tiny adventure actually started in a different depressing wasteland, that of a creative block. At the beginning of August, I was suddenly overwhelmed by everything I have coming due in the next few months. All at once, I realized that I will be opening the tour of my newest conceptual series in January and I have yet to finish all of the paintings—compositions which, at the moment, seem ambitious to the point of lunacy. And, to make matters more stressful, I’ve planned a 3 week visit with my grandmother this fall—that’s 20 or so days that I’ll be very far away from my studio! I won’t bore you with further details of all the commitments I’ve signed myself up for in the next 16 weeks, suffice it to say that last month my tight schedule had paralyzed me completely.
So I did what I always used to do in a crisis: I painted a self-portrait.
For some reason, self-portraits have always been my home base. Even as a student, I turned to my own face when looking for new direction in my work—a fact betrayed by the very large number of self-portraits that I’ve made over the years. My paintings of myself have been such a crutch that I began to be embarassed by them, and, two years ago, I gave them up cold turkey. In July 2007, after finishing this portable portrait, I challenged myself to take at least a year off from my face in order to discover new coping mechanisms to get me through rough patches in my work. Though my abstinence has been fruitful, I have to say that the best part of the two years without is how good it feels to return to self-portraiture after being so long away. A true addict!
While plotting a return to my face last month, I realized that simply painting myself wasn’t going to pull me out of my funk—after all, one of the paintings that I have yet to complete for my upcoming series and tour is a self-portrait!
I needed to change things up a bit; I needed to avoid adding to the pile of unsold self-portraits that clutter up my storage space. That’s when I decided to work in miniature on panel.
I had really enjoyed the challenge of creating this special small diptych earlier this year, and I was inspired to work smaller still, on Masonite board measuring just 7 x 5 inches.
My first real experience with panel was in late 2007 with this portrait. I remember being extremely frustrated with the support. Its lack of absorbancy was totally unacceptable to me since I was already working with watered down paints. Also, I didn’t like how the super smooth surface revealed every nuance of every brushstroke. I missed the slight blurring effect that canvas’ texture has on my marks.
In 2008, I found myself painting on panel again, but, though this composition was larger than the last, the faces in it were a good deal smaller. I realized that part of what I hadn’t liked about panel was working big.
It was that realization combined with the logistics of the subjects’ lives that gave me the courage to paint the special small diptych that I created earlier this year, and, ultimately, led me to try more miniature painting.
The very thing that I miss about canvas and other stretched materials when working on a large panel is what I so dislike about working small on canvas. The texture of the material, minimal though it may be, softens my smaller work too much. Panel is a support which keeps me honest in my brushstrokes—there’s no fudging a mark on Masonite—and that’s what makes it so perfect for miniatures.
Gwenn Seemel
Second Face
2009
acrylic on panel
7 x 5 inches
(detail below)
The nature of panel allows the smaller work to carry the same intensity and boldness as my larger paintings but in a tiny package.
photo by David
A miniature or two on Masonite were just what I needed to shake myself out of my creative block. And now I’d best get back to my deadlines…!
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CATEGORIES: - Process images - Practice -
fookie...
your work is amazing. What a great creative mind you have. I thought you were working in Pastel.
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