“Woman Chained” – a gift from the muse…
I’m not used to having a complete idea for a painting when I start to work. And coming up with abstract compositions, for me, is still much more challenging than painting a representational work, where I just paint what I see. Working abstractly is usually much more a process of discovery of the image.
Not so with this, my latest painting, which was started and almost completed in about half-a-day one Sunday. It is kind of amazing to me that an abstract painting this size — 24″ x 24″ — could be done so quickly. Many of my paintings that are 1/4 or 1/8 the size of this tend to present much more of a struggle and can take days or weeks to create.
With this one, the basic idea came to me early one Sunday afternoon, and by late afternoon, I had filled out my concept for how the rest of it would go. Then it was just a matter of sketching the basic structure on canvas, and then painting it. I did spend a couple of nights making some adjustments to it, but still to me, this is speed painting! In some ways, painting this was similar to painting a representational work, as I already knew what went where, and then it was just a matter of doing it.