Pencils

In this painting I was trying to break with my past by making more of a commitment to abstraction.  I admit I felt lost in the beginning, and throughout much of the painting.  Doing the things I did were against type.  My other abstract pieces were more thought pieces than pure abstractions.  This one is just about the paint on the canvas - what it looks like and what I need it to become.  I’ve said, many times throughout this process that I felt more connected to a painting surface than I ever had before - the surface and the paint.  I have been tightly connected to nearly all of my paintings of the past but it was based on what I was trying to replicate - again, head pieces - a tight rope walking in reality.

Whether I was successful or not is a question left for others to figure out.  For me, I stopped painting when I was no longer embarrassed by what I was looking at.  A lot of this painting is directed toward the comfort of making a specific stroke with a brush.  There were many restatements but no erasures.  This created a problem for me because I usually spend a lot of time refining edges and the like.  With acrylic paint the window for erasure is very narrow - thus forcing a presence on the artist.  If you are not “there” you can’t make it work.

The title is really just an experience I had when I first looked, critically, at the “finished” painting - it reminded me of a bunch of Ticonderoga or Dixon pencils, strewn about.


​Medium: Acrylic Paint on Canvas
Not framed presently
Size: 25" x 30"


Price: $900.00 (Price does not include applicable sales tax or shipping)