I recorded this little video a couple of months ago. I was near the finish line on the three paintings that will be shown at Texas Contemporary this weekend. It was one of those days when I am torn between wanting to run out of the studio and needing to stay. By the time I set up my mobile to film this video I had already washed my hands about four times, getting ready to leave only to pick up another jar of paint and not knowing what to do with it. Dark puffy form it’s called.
In the end the painting made me so mad that I couldn't be in charge of it anymore. It’s such a release to give up on keeping the process coherent in your head. It feels so expansive to find yourself not caring if the next move will end up destroying months of work. The painting forced me to release it from its cage of informed action.
For months I was forcing it to be a landscape painting. Watching the video today made me realise that this was the last fight near the finish line. I got a few more minutes of landscape out of it before it turned on me and went the way it wanted all along.
I called it “The Rakish Progression of a Lengthy Pause”. It’s the third the three panels that will be shown in Texas. I always worked on them hanging next to each other as in the photo below. Yet, I wouldn't think of them as a triptych per se. I like the idea of a triptych by association, not intent.
