Starting at the end

You always start at the end.  We’re human and this is the most natural thing to do when we’re interacting with our environment, we always have an intention, a context, a motivation or an imagined outcome.  There is a point to what we do which influences our decisions on how to do it. It may be the idea of the exploration for exploration sake or it may be to reach a specific end point, to build a friendship, develop a lover, reach Cape Town via a circuitous route, achieve a just out of reach physical goal, heat the water for tea etc.

There is always intention, an end goal and if you are not aware of this end goal, you won’t know how to tie all the moving parts together or you won’t understand how everything fits so that they work together. You also won’t know where to go when you are lost and if you are not comfortable with feeling lost, you may shy away from risk altogether.

How you start determines how you finish and this is especially true in painting.  Set your intentions and be aware otherwise at the end of the painting you will feel frustrated, wondering how you arrived where you are and how you can be the painter that you really want to be.

START AT THE END.

Starting at the end is essentially the idea of concept but it is also more, this is painting after all so it is so much more.

Concept can be a little dry. Starting at the end is concept + diving into the narrative of your painting, the story, the poetry, the emotional content. What is it that you are communicating, what is it that is compelling you to paint this painting?  Build this idea in your imagination and explore it, develop the characters, imagine the setting, feel what you want your viewer to feel, visualize the idea of the painting in your minds eye (this applies to abstraction as well). Allow yourself to be carried away in your intention for the painting so that when you begin, you are not concerning yourself with the strictly technical aspects and instead you are thinking about the poetry. The poetry speaks to us directly. This does not exclude attention to the technical, my assumption is that you have a handle on the basics of composition, perspective, vanishing points etc.  It means that you ensure that you also include the poetry and should you need to make a choice between the technical and the poetry, always choose the poetry.

This is painting and the medium betrays our attitudes and thoughts so it is important to be physically present to the painting as well as giving your imagination over to it.  Start a painting with energy and commitment even if you plan to create a placid piece as this is the only way to give energy to the brushstrokes.  It is easy to develop calm later but almost impossible to increase intensity if it is just not there.

Example:

‘Beneath the Summer Blossoms’ 30″ x 40″

The feeling of this painting has very little to do with the actual location on a specific day and it has very little to do with any accuracy with regards to proportions, colour and perspectives.  It has nothing to do with thinking about where the light source is, what the correct values should be nor the placement of warm and cool tones.

The poetry of this painting is that glorious summer feeling when the sunshine is warm and the sea air diffuses the landscape in a way that only happens when it is safe to ignore your jumper in the morning.  The poetry of this painting is the simple happiness of sharing outside space mid way through your work day, strolling or eating the sandwich your spouse made for you that morning.

This approach to the painting is very different than had I jumped into the technical and bogged myself down in drawing, fussing about the vanishing point, the correct proportions of the people to the trees to the gantries, worrying about where the light source is and am I allowed to put white here if the sun is there. It is very different to restraining myself to the correct and wondering if I can put warm tones in the trees if they are behind the people and what is the accurate blue to describe the parent and child versus the office friends under the trees.

This is not to say that you should not be aware of the formal elements in painting and to practice them but it is to say that this should not be your obsession.  Your obsession should be the poetry, learn your steps so that you can dance not learn your steps so that you can step.

Had I concerned myself with the technical details, you would not find the hazy blue greys which run languidly through the figures, over the ground, into the trees and off into the mountains in the distance.  You would not find the lovely slashes of white which caress your eye and move you through the painting to the places that they want you to visit before they hold your hand and take you to the next space.  You would not find the little dashes of orange that excite you just enough to stir your enthusiasm but not enough to overwhelm you or to dryly describe structures. You would not find the joy of the suggested movement of the people and the ambiguous 3 figures under the tree. The painting would have harder contrasts, more people, more definition and there certainly wouldn’t be that lovely area of dark just under the tree on the far left, whose only purpose in the painting is the sheer pleasure that it brings when you discover it.

If any of the elements of poetry had crept into the painting while I was obsessing about the technical, they would have existed independently and therefore without meaning and I probably would have destroyed them in my pursuit of correct technique. How would I have been able to leave poetry if it was not correct?

The poetry of this painting exists because I allowed my imagination to run wild in the painting, I walked alongside the parent and child and listened to their conversation, I sat underneath the tree and ate my sandwich and I felt the cool breeze move along my uncovered arms while the warm sunshine massaged my back.  The moment I picked up my brush I started painting with intention and while the strokes were being laid down I listened to the seagulls piercing the air and the horns of the ships announcing their departures.  When I considered the whites, I thought not of where the sun was but I glided through the painting to all the places I wanted to visit, moving along smoothly.

This painting started from poetry, I knew where I wanted to go first and then started to break down the parts while never forgetting the story as opposed to starting with the parts and at some point trying to tie it together not knowing what the story is and thus not recognizing the poetry when it arrived.