Art abhors a vacuum.
Art is not made in a vacuum. It’s the everyday disruptions to and changes in the creative process that help form a work of art, and, without these influences, art doesn’t look much like art.
In my own work, the changing aspects of my day-to-day life impact how I work and, as a result, how a painting develops over the course of a year.
But more than life, one of the biggest interruptions in the process of any one painting in my studio consists of all the other paintings that I have going at the same time. I’m always switching from one canvas to another, creating a funny kind of family as I do so.
And, where this portrait is concerned, it was a new tool that most altered the process.
Right around the time of this photo, I acquired a very wide brush and I started experimenting in order to learn how to use it.
In this image, the brush’s distinct mark is very visible in one spot in particular: it’s the swath of turquoise that’s laid over the white and pink stripes of Siobhan’s shirt in the bottom center of the composition.
The square edge on it is a direct result of the new tool.
Another important influence on the finished painting of Siobhan came from a very unusual and entirely delightful source.
It was from this drawing by Siobhan’s sister which their parents sent out as a holiday card. In it, Gabriella emphasizes Siobhan’s beauty marks as essential to a likeness of her sister (Siobhan is in the middle). Over the course of my painting, I’d layered over these marks, so Gabriella’s drawing was a good reminder to me to put them back in.
Gwenn Seemel
Siobhan
2010
acrylic on canvas
36 x 24 inches
(detail below)
Of course, the placement of Siobhan’s portrait among her siblings also directed how I painted her.
Gwenn Seemel
Gabriella and Siobhan and Max
2010
acrylic on canvas
36 x 72 inches (combined dimensions)
When I designed each of the compositions for the three siblings, I was very aware of the other two paintings. What’s more, I worked the three of them simultaneously, drawing elements from one composition into the next and working to unify them. In other words, not only does art abhor a vacuum, but it rather likes requirements—any kind of boundaries that can be pushed.
Art is never made in a so-called pure manner, without unexpected intrusions, and it shouldn’t be. The interruptions and outside pressures are often the most inspiring parts of the process.
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CATEGORIES: - Process images - Practice -
