I started work on a large (36 x 60 inches) painting recently. This painting will might end up taking several months to complete--though I hope it gets done much sooner than that. (Of course, I'll be working on several other pieces during that time as well...)
I'm more than a little nervous about this painting, for several reasons. The main reason is that, except for reworking The Presentation of Spiders, I haven't created a narrative (large/major) painting since I was in college. (I graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute, with my BFA in painting, three years ago.)
When I started college in 2003, I felt that I had scores of good ideas I wanted to develop. By the time I reached my seniour year in the Spring of 2008, I had been through so much second-guessing (via some fairly harsh critiques from both my instructors and fellow students) that I had begun to doubt whether or not I wanted to paint (and/or was able to paint) at all. n fact, I came very close to dropping out of school after finishing juniour year. A painting major, I nonetheless created only two paintings my entire seniour year; both at the beginning of my first seniour semester. The rest of my work as a seniour were sculptures!
Questioning one's self can be a very good thing. But, questioning one's work to the point of becoming "artistically paralyzed" isn't good at all. It was a struggle to finish school, and I fell really good about how far I've come--as an artist--since graduation.
With the work I'm preparing for my upcoming solo show, Arachnaphilia: For the Love of Spiders, I'm starting to feel much as I did when I started school. I feel that I have quite a few really good ideas once again--and I'm really ready to start work on them, and see them through.
Still, I've set aside the large painting (for now); the priority from now through March 31st is to finish the stuff for the show.
After that, though, I want to start work on the next "series" of pieces, and I want them to be physically larger than the paintings I've been making over the last two and a half years, and I also want them to be more developed, conceptually.
There will be more spiders...!
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