Work in Progress
Mountains Are a woman
This began as….
This was my first time using a projection stencil and I was totally hooked. The mountains just grew from the hair naturally, this is my first part of this series.
The mountains grew, I started to learn more about shadows and shaping the form. I’ve done plenty of figure work, but I really wanted to push myself to have more layers and depth in my skin tone.
Then she became so bright, and like the mountains on Guam. I really want to go back and make another composition similar to this one. This piece made me realize why painters make the same composition over and over again. I feel like I could make 1000 versions of this and each one would tell a different story.
And then I discovered the theme, the purpose. Initially I wanted to do some mangroves holding up the mountains, I will probably shift back to this. But you can understand how my mind works, how the piece forms itself, how I learn from it.
difficulties
My painting process is not linear whatsoever. This makes a lot of people annoyed. They tell me I cover things up too much, that I make too much work for myself, that I am inefficient.
Those people can suck it.
Because I am here to learn, to experience, to let the story be told to me through the work.
I don’t want to get something right on the first try. I want to learn.
This is where she shifts from island mountain hair woman to Alaskan cycle. Maybe it’s a symbol of what I was experiencing at the time, who knows. But this also led me to cut into the figure more deeply and strive for accuracy, and this makes a huge difference in the work.
This is where we go into the figure and correct the underpainting, so that the remaining layers will be accurate and supple flesh. These mountains poured out of me as well, like a reconnection to my home and the cycles of the north.
the payoff
Her figure is much more accurate now, but I still ended up having to go back into the face and correct some proportional things there.
But the truth is I love that, I love the puzzle of a composition and figuring out what makes our minds understand something as a “face” or “body”
This is where she really begins to come alive
She’s almost there
This is where I really took ownership of the work.
There is a lot of pressure with an art piece to keep it “pretty” to not “ruin” it.
Kill your darlings, and ruin your paintings. Because there are enough beautiful naked paintings. This was such an opportunity to demonstrate something with my body.
So I made her feet rot into mushrooms that feed the flowers. Her hair was growing into mountains, but her hands are also rooted into the ground, sucking up the water that flows from the mountains.
Women and humans are cyclical, and I wanted to celebrate that. The dark, disgusting rotting parts of nature are beautiful to me.
She still has more elements to come.
