Painting the Unthinkable

Last night, I gave a little lecture at my friend, Ray's, Art Practices class at San Francisco State. He asked me to talk about, among other things, how I came to my particular art form. Hm, well, besides the biographical events that led me to decorative painting, there's the physical aspect of painting on a large scale that I like- oh, and that someone could be enveloped in the experience that I created with color, texture, pattern...

But my Painting a Week Challenge is about well, challenging myself, so I did the unthinkable...

I painted these teeny tiny (2" x 4" to be exact) canvases to see if I could still create movement and the spontaneous interactions that paint and color can generate...

I did them quickly- so I wouldn't let myself get paralyzed by the size- and kicked out some pretty interesting little starter pieces... they remind me of a couple of my favorite painters who, funny enough...

[caption id="attachment_7730" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="(Clifford Still)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_7731" align="aligncenter" width="467" caption="(James Nares)"][/caption]

Paint really, really big...

[caption id="attachment_7737" align="aligncenter" width="466" caption="(James Nares in his studio)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_7736" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="(An observer lost in a Clifford Still painting)"][/caption]

The cool thing is, beyond walls and ceilings, I'm also seeing these textures and patterns as textiles... hm... maybe I can integrate my floral paintings with some cool pattern and see them both coming off a bolt some day.