Incoherent Ramblings

For some time I have been painting from photos of my family, friends, and places. In the past I would react to the images, basically throwing my two cents right away. Now I feel compelled to simply paint them as best I can without any obvious opinion of the images I decided to use. I suppose the only reaction would be my paint application and the choice of the picture itself. It has been a strange exercise/ compulsion to say the least. Just to simply observe these images longer than a minute has been a strange experience. I have never found my family or friends interesting enough to paint and I find the act seems more like a school assignment or something so fundamental that I never took it so serious. To write it now even sound rather trite, “Family Portraits”. But here I am painting and blogging about it, so why do it.

Over the past months of painting these people I have been noticing more things than I have before. I have yet to decide whether it’s because of my paintings or just simply due to age and wisdom; perhaps both. It is an odd thing, I feel at ease spending more time with them. I feel a genuine interest in getting to know them better but with some habitual caution, old habits, still justified to an extent. It has been and I am sure I am not alone, that one should keep a distance to an extent from people. I have yet to find anyone who is 100 % open with another person. However I do look forward to the day if it would exist.

At this point I have painted enough of these to begin to react to them to an extent. It will be a gradual process. Now I have been at this point before, I remember mentioning the city paintings and have yet to really dive into it. But this goal seems to be a more viable one. I believe it will happen subtly. Maybe in one or two paintings out of seven or ten. I want to use my reactions sparingly, it has to feel genuine, justifiable.