Progress

A painting will take many forms before it is complete. Some forms last hours while others can last weeks. For most of my work I have a reference image created in photoshop. I started using digital collage and projection during my senior year at Pratt, and that process has lingered with me. Here are some examples of progress for my work.

This piece Harrisburg is from my thesis at Pratt. It was one of the first pieces I used a projector with. Although my process has slightly changed since then, this experiment created a new path for my practice. Blending photos together on photoshop allowed me to find unique overexposed shapes and colors, brought about by the blending of memories years apart. Once brush came to canvas, I would tweak colors even further, letting go of the plan and allowing spontaneity to guide me.

One project that sparked my focus on the progress of painting had students create a master study, but could only work in small sections at a time. I chose Daybreak by Maxfield Parish. I leaned into the rule and worked strictly left to right top to bottom, completing a square before moving on. This project taught me what not to do, taught me to always be looking at the whole image, to work the whole canvas during each session. We ended the master study by “enhancing” specific aspects of the painting. I wanted to enlarge and exaggerate the contrast of the bushes, figures, and mountain. It will always be one of my favorite projects from junior year.

Sometimes progress doesn’t feel like progress. Here I had worked on two versions of the same painting, Red in Bed. It didn’t take long for me to see which one could become cohesive for the thesis. But it wasn’t a waste of time, it was part of the process to figure out what would work. Scrap is still progress.

This commission from 2022 is an example of only using projection to trace the shapes. When the goal is realism, it isn’t helpful for me to paint through the projected light. This painting had stages that lasted months at a time, as I was well out of school and had a lot less time to dedicate to painting. I spent a lot of time staring.