I’m thrilled!
Yesterday we held our first online critique for the 8-week Abstract Expressionism painting class that I’m facilitating.

Each student sent in several paintings that they had created using the first exercise of the course.

The exercise was to use primarily black and white on a large surface of paper or canvas. They could use thick or thin brushes, charcoal, or other drawing media. The process was to try not to think, but intuitively make a mark or stroke, and then step back several feet away to pause and look. Then when they felt the impulse, they could respond to their mark by approaching the canvas and adding another mark or stroke. I asked them to continue this process until they felt done.

Additionally, they could use white as a way to cover or delete marks they had made.
Using colors was optional as long as they used a limited palette,

It’s exciting to see the unique response and style of each student. Fortunately, everyone in the group is already comfortable using paint, and some are accomplished artists already.

The students work independently during the week, using new exercises that I introduce weekly.
We meet once a week to share our experience and share feedback on one another’s work.

I look forward to the next 7 weeks of co-creating this workshop with this passionate and expressive group of painters.

Who is to say when a painting is finished?

The first twenty minutes of a painting are usually the most exciting moments of a painting. The lines are fresh, the colors are bold, and the image is clear.  A painting can be considered finished within the first twenty minutes, yet rarely does an artist stop that soon.

In my experience, I often seek a return to the original freshness of the first twenty minutes when the initial strokes express mystery and magic, when the painting reflects a direct response between painter and paint.

The looming question that nearly every artist ponders is: When is a painting finished?

It is a very tough question to answer and for that reason, many artists work far longer on a painting than is needed.

In my practice, I need to discipline myself to pause and step back. I paint quickly and my painting changes shape rapidly. It takes a lot of courage to call a painting done at an early phase. When I paint in group, my artist friends often tell me I need to stop, since they can see my painting is still fresh and most likely finished.

Several years ago I visited a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City called “Unfinished”. The show displayed numerous paintings from the Renaissance to contemporary. What all these paintings shared in common was a freshness and a peek at artistic process.

In some paintings one could still see bare, untouched canvas where much of the surface was not completed. In some artworks only a small part of the image was fully defined, leaving the rest of the image barely suggested. Each work of art seemed to pose the question: Is it finished? Yet every piece felt alive and fully expressed.

So often as artists we have in mind what a finished piece of art should look like. We aspire to complete a painting, but often we overlook the beauty and expression in an ‘unfinished’ state. That amazing state of becoming is what breathes life into the painting. Looking back at the development thus far in my painting, I can see that I want to reintegrate the energy of the first twenty minutes.

“Things are never as they seem.”
This writing prompt inspired a valuable lesson that I learned as an artist. We all have inner critics whose voices don’t serve our highest good. Learning how to quiet those voices is an ongoing challenge in life as well as art.

“Ugh!”
“What gaudy colors!”
“There’s way too much definition and those shapes don’t work!”
“Who am I kidding calling myself an artist?”

This all too familiar conference of critics called out their insults as I stared back at my canvas.
For weeks I’d been struggling with a large painting and I began to hate it. It was an abstract composition based on tropical plant forms. I had been inspired at first, but the painting had become complex. I lost myself in a mesh of colors, lines and shapes. After a while, I just couldn’t see it clearly. The more I worked on it, the more I thought of it as a failure.  “It’s probably the ugliest thing I ever painted”, I thought to my horror.

I couldn’t look at it any longer. Finally I wrapped it up and hauled the painting down to my storage unit. I turned it to face the wall so that no-one could see it, not even my other stored objects. Shutting the light off and locking the door behind me, I walked away thinking I could paint much better than that.

A year passed before I looked at my painting again.
I’d been searching for something that I had stored away when I spied the back of that canvas squeezed tight against the side of the wall.

I had forgotten about it.

Pulling the canvas out of hiding I held it out to the light of day and looked at it anew. My eyes were met by an array of exotic shapes, juicy colors, a celebration of tropical flora. “What an amazing painting!” I thought.

The critics were silent. I could see my artwork with truly fresh eyes… with objective eyes. 
It needed just a few strokes to complete it and I soon sold it at by next show. It’s still one of my favorites.

Big Island, oil on canvas, 36″ x 48″