Painting in Progress | Psychedelicious Byloos Painting Gets Made

October 30, 2009

Psychedelicious Painting Daily Progress

Filed under: Painting — Matty @ 3:23 pm

I’ve never actually been able to show multiple pictures of an entire painting on this blog — for two very practical reasons. One, I’ve not started and finished a painting in twelve months now, and two, this blog has been up for those same twelve months. Wait. Are those two things related?

This painting is the first one I’ll hopefully finish. It’s based on a non-concentric spiral image that appeared to be computer generated; I found it online doing a google image search for “spiral.” Why spirals? Well, I wanted to try to do two things: not use any generative detail previously used in my painting practice to start and finish a painting. Meaning, no photograph, no architecture, no image bordering on representation, no color scheme, etc. Second, I wanted to make the new paintings do exactly what the drawings don’t: work with color, get sloppy, fall apart, be singular. That doesn’t really answer why spirals I guess. I had an image of a spiral appear in my head one day, completely out of the blue. Felt like an omen. And the image, I thought, would allow me to reduce painting to a daily practice of mark making, which I figured would trick my head into making and finishing work again.

If you want to see this thing “get made,” then come back until it’s done, scroll down to the bottom, and one by one scrolling back up, you’ll see it happen. Wish me luck. I’ll be damned if I don’t finish this thing.

Psychedelicious One: Byloos Painting Gets Made
So now it’s getting to a choosy stage, by which I mean I can’t just mix up a color and fill in a shape — I have been starting to make decisions about how to spread the colors out, mostly between green and pink, and thereby maximize the effect.