My paintings “Transmutation” and “Spirit Guide Of Inner Realms” are going to be showing in the Character in Context exhibition at the A. R. Mitchell Museum coming up soon. This group exhibition features process work from each artist in the show, from preliminary drawings to color studies, accompanying final artworks. This will be a large collection of original illustrations from living illustrators in the Western United States, and is the most comprehensive presentation of processes from living and working illustrators ever collected in one space. It’s a wonderful opportunity to get the chance to see so many different artists and wide range of processes, with insights about how our work develops from start to finish.

In my case, these two pieces are an example of how I might work when starting a piece and how the same piece might end up looking when finished. In my process, the start more often gets folded into what ends up being the finished piece. In this case, and because the exhibition is showcasing a glimpse at our process, the one painting “Transmutation” (on the left) was the inspiration for the painting “Spirit Guide of Inner Realms” (on the right).

For me, in many cases, what happens in the beginning stage is mainly abstract mark-making and exploring. It’s my intention during this stage to try many different things and experiment with hopes of discovering something new. It’s also a time of reflecting and wandering and allowing an inner dialogue to emerge in the form of imagery.

After a session of working on several panels, I may stand back and take a look at them all and basically just allow myself to observe the flow of the compositions, the texture, the integration of experimentation and marks. At this early stage, I’m not necessarily trying to find anything in the marks, but sometimes something will speak to me.

Transmutation

I hadn’t taken any photos of the quicksketch of “Transmutation” in the abstract stage prior to developing some form in areas that appeared to be facial features, but it looked very similar to how it looks here in this painting sketch. That’s how my paintings develop. From abstract to a session of observing and finding by way of pareidolia. This can happen throughout the entire development of the painting, in some cases. A constant losing and finding something new, following where it takes me, allowing what seems to flow best in terms of composition, mood, and story.

In “Transmutation,” after seeing a face in the initial abstract marks, I softened a few edges on the nose and pulled some lights or pushed some darks in order to make the face a slight bit more realized than the textural marks it began with, but I really wanted to retain the textural quality of the marks in there as well. This painting is acrylic on illustration board, and I really loved the energy and mood of it. I also was not intending to bring more form to any of the other faces I see in this image, but I do see a few more in there, in what I read as a sort of totem initially, and I felt the movement in the dark brushstrokes appeared and felt like birds flying around this character/totem. As far as as it stands on its own, I felt it was finished. And this is what inspired what ultimately became “Spirit Guide of Inner Realms” (below).

Spirit Guide of Inner Realms

When painting “Spirit Guide of Inner Realms,” I wanted to retain the abstract quality and movement of the birds and not render them to look like still photography of birds flying. I saw enough in “Transmutation” to loosely find what inspired the shapes and direction of strokes in order to get that feeling from it, without trying to paint literal birds or anything like detailed feathers. Doing that would lose what I loved about what inspired me about it all.

The areas of where I first read as a totem of other faces at first were painted into this painting as well, but I felt it became too stagnant, lacked the energy and movement of what had first inspired me, and it drew the eye away from the expression and mood of the face that is the central focus. What I decided to do with the faces stacked like a totem was to paint thick colorful brushstrokes over them and then carve back into those with various pickout tools such as spatulas and paint shapers as well as the handle of a brush. I had a lot of fun with these marks and colors.

The surrounding environment in “Spirit Guide..” was inspired by the blocks of color in “Transmutation”, and I just added some warm light into the right side of the composition a bit as well for balance, as well as some atmospheric softening for a glow effect inspired by my love of golden hour lighting.

I hope this information is an enjoyable bit of insight into how these paintings were developed, and by seeing them side-by-side, you are able to compare the composition, flow and direction of strokes, and some areas of the paintings to find the similarities and what guided my decisions and overall vision.

To see more art and learn about the process of other artists in this exhibition, check out these great recent articles by Sarah Finnigan:  Creative Process – Character In Context and Before The Paint