Color is the Thing for Me
ZOUNDS!!!
Oil on canvas
6″ x 6″
© 2009 Marilyn Fenn
I am getting very excited about my upcoming solo show. I’m painting like a madman, and I’m beginning to be very happy with some of the results.
When I made arrangements months ago to do this show, I had no fear about showing my work, as I had just come off of a long period of intense and successful creation, and was (and still am) very happy with the work I had created.
But I was ready to move on to the next thing creatively, though I wasn’t sure what it was.
So I began this year by doing lots of tiny sketches and many small paintings, searching for a satisfying direction. I attempted a few larger paintings, but they went awry. At a workshop, I created some new work in encaustic, though in the end I wasn’t happy with most of them. To date, I have completed about 70 pieces this year — which is a lot for me — though most of them are sketches and small paintings.
Then, finally, the realization that color is the “thing” for me, and as long as I’m true to that, I’m happy, and my work succeeds. The other issues – the other elements that go into an abstract painting (shape, form, surface quality, etc.) I continue to think about and work on as well.
How Do You Know When You’re Done with a Painting?
“Bubbling Up”
Oil on canvas
6″ x 6″
© 2009 Marilyn Fenn
I was in a class several years ago in which another student complained about painting abstractly, because she didn’t know where to stop. She said when she worked representationally, at least she knew when she was done — for her, it was when the painting looked like the thing she was representing. Of course, it’s not as simple as that for many representational painters, but often it seems when one is just starting to draw and paint, success is measured by how close one’s piece gets to looking like the object or scene one is depicting.
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