Selected Painting of the Day

No, it's not one of those painting-a-day things. I don't think I could do a painting a day. This is a blog feature I'd like to try about paintings that are already completed and seasoned and that I'd like to comment on - and hopefully provoke a thread on.

So, here's my first pick - just because it's kind of out of the mainstream of the work I'm doing now and really reminds of work I was doing on paper a few years back.



This is called "Magical Thinking" and was painted a few months ago (2008). It's encaustic on wood with a poured center and embedded plant parts. It's 24"x24"x 1.5". Here's the thing, if it's so different from the rest of the work I'm making now, what to do? I could sell it off by itself, not show it with the rest of my work, or make more work like it. This is always a problem for me because every now and then I come up with strange pieces that don't fit in with the direction I'm moving in. Yet I think they need to be made. I guess this is where commerce and art divide.

Isn't there something to be said for the unique work that is not part of a series? Any comments on this? I think the making fills some need in my work and maybe it just gets that out of my system so I can continue moving forward. Although, who said everything has to be a series? Maybe a series emerges over time in retrospect instead of intentionally?

This one is an acrylic on ricepaper painting, 36"x36", from 2001 or 2002 that reminds me of Magical Thinking. It's called "Four Directions" and was part of a series I did with central focus and a very geometric layout. I liked making these because they just expanded geometrically from the center. It felt very satisfying to see where they would go by the time they reached the edges - another type of exploration.