Content Aside, Focus on Painting - Michaël Borremans Plus Robert Henri

The painting in its current stage. Oil 24"W x 30"H

"Michaël Borremans plus Robert Henri" This is what happens when you read all about both artists at the same time, both of their ideas and work creeps into your brush handling and ideas about what to paint and what to leave out.

In order to really concentrate on the practice of painting and not worry so much about end result or product, I decided to paint someone that I do not know. There is a lot pressure to paint extremely well when you paint your kids or a friend or some of the people in the NF community. I want to paint them in a way that dignifies and honors them, but that is also a bit of a paralyzing aspect because it limits the amount of risk I want to take. For my next painting, I decided to go find a picture of a man I didn't know and I found one of a man making scrambled eggs in Trinidad. I found that if I just painted him without the background of the kitchen and frying pan, it would be a very interesting image. I also don't particularly care about him, he is just an art object, he doesn't even have a name, he is just anonymous.

This is not unlike Borreman's work. He uses stock photography and aims at taking individuality out of his paintings. And, although mine are not images from the 1930's and 1940's, I can see the advantage of this method.

Here is the sequence of process work:

First block in - No background

Washy background - adding a shirt

Uh oh..the shirt was lame, looked like something from the 70s, it got gessoed over