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March 31, 2009
paintings from december
by sven at 7:00 am
Back in December I was doing a lot of paintings in my sketchbook. I've been meaning to post a sampling for a long while now.
I was finding that abstracts were a nice way to warm up the visual part of my brain. Lately, though, the painting energy's been getting spent on birthday cards.
As you can probably tell, these are all improvised pieces. I only have the roughest idea of what I'm going to do when I start out.
The text reads: "A long time waiting, waiting I've said so many times, but not now, the river flows and falls… All out of time, out of mind, then fall out, these words like swords on the tongue, long and dangling over the last man on Earth, we wait and our tongues hurt as we watch each last ear turned to hear the snap as it breaks and drops… So close your eyes and forget the name because there is no name… If we gave him a name the pain would multiply -- but no, we forget the words and let go -- we fall like knives. Damocles in the bull's-eye crosshairs, our planes drop downward to Pearl Harbor, thirsty for time to halt and tongues tied in knots."
It's stream-of-consciousness writing, largely there for texture. (Also a little shout out to Grant, whose film "The Sword of Damocles" popped to mind.)
Text: "Long time I waited -- does waiting ever pay? I waited but the river did not. So unhitched from my moorings now I'm falling downhill with water toward a fall. But in the meantime I sing along with the trouble of currents, a song of drowning stars. Look up through moving windows to a dark like sleep itself, yes dark close to me as my own eyes closed. Dreaming awake is its own reward."
Painting lettering is slower and feels more meditative than just using a colored pencil.
I keep imagining that some day I'm going to draw upon these abstract textures for painting a stopmo backdrop.
More use of text as texture.
The weirdest part about doing this painting was snipping off fingers from the photocopies of my hands. I've still got at least one hanging around, which I'd like to use in a future piece.
I did this one while staying up all night on New Year's Eve, waiting to see the first sunrise of the year. Contrary to what I'd thought, the loopiness of being sleep-deprived didn't make me feel looser and more creative… Rather, exhaustion poisoned the process, and sucked all the fun out of doing art that night.
posted by sven | March 31, 2009 7:00 AM | categories: painting, sketchbook