Thursday, March 4, 2010

A Liberating Approach to Painting


I recently came across an interview of artist Larry Poons through the Unedit my heart blog.

I find Mr Poons' understanding of painting liberating.
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Paintings are mistakes. You put a mark on a canvas, and it’s a mistake. Of course it’s a mistake, otherwise it would be wonderful, because it would be finished. But it’s not. After maybe 50 or 60,000 mistakes, you give up. Like Leonardo said, “Works of art aren’t finished, they’re abandoned.” That’s absolutely true, art is never finished.
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When you’re painting, then you’ve got nothing to paint until there’s something there, that first mistake. But once you see something – you’ll see a flow or a shape – then that’s what you’re painting, and that’s where paintings come from.
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Of course the only tool a painter has – or ever had – to make paintings is color. It’s all color. There is no drawing in painting, just like Cézanne said. What you think is drawing is just two colors coming together, and if the colors aren’t harmonious (to use Cézanne’s word) then neither is the drawing, and it’s a bad painting.
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Sunday, January 3, 2010

Create Drawings based on Art from the Past or Art by other Artists

Over the Christmas holidays, I have introduced another change (besides adding erase) to my colouring book drawings. After making 1500 drawings, I need injection of new forms and shapes and composition. Hence, I have started to look at art work from the past, and art work from today's artists, and treat them as subjects for new drawings.
The first such drawings are drawings of King Tut.


The second batch are drawings based on the the work of John Baldessari.


Adding Erase

"Erase" is a drawing process that I have acknowledged early on but never used as a major way to construct drawings. In 2010, I will be using it more, starting with these drawings.


To show the lines that have been erased, I have left a trace of them in the final work.