Anxietal Paintings

Sometimes painting, drawing, sketching, being creative can be such a stress relief (more on this later in another post I am currently writing), other times it can actually be somewhat stressful. I've been doing these oil studies lately. Something very different than what I've done before. Usually when painting with oils I'll use very little to no medium and just go at it with the paint itself. For these studies I've been using very little paint and mostly just medium and so it ends up being layers of oil wash. Layer after layer  I end up rendering these portraits.

So I've done a few and they are fun to do. The people that I've been doing the portraits of are usually someone that posts a selfie on Instagram, and something about the pic just yells at me that it needs to be painted. Well a close friend is graduating and I figured why not make one of her as a graduation present! The previous ones I've made have been fairly easy to do, they've been small paintings (8 x 10), monochromatic and have helped me get my mind off of other stuff. I usually do them while on phone conversations or while watching Hulu, it takes several days to let medium dry in-between sessions but total overall time on painting is about 3-5 hours each.

The current one I'm working on has been a bit a tad different. I'm doing a much larger size and like I stated before this one is going to be a present. Where as the others have been for fun this one has a lot more tension involved. The main reason is because its for someone. The others I had no audience for, they were studies for me to do then toss them in the closet with all the other random art I've done. This one will have an audience. Even if its just my friend, which I know it wont just be her, it'll be others.

I don't know how others artists feel but knowing that your work will be viewed puts more pressure on it and in a way it blocks creativity. It happened to one of my artistic heroes Jean-Michel Basquiat, its happened to others, it happens to me. I think non creative types often view the arts as something easy to do. Like we can just pull out paper or a canvas and just sling some ink or paint and it will look good. For some that IS the case. I, and many other artists, get the "hey can you do this for free", or ask for some art with a vague description and expect a da Vinci and its not a reality. It just doesn't work that way.

We put our all into each piece we create and then someone hangs up the representation of our skill and talent, of the labour that we poured into the piece. Then people see it and some love it and some hate it but either way our skills get judged. The extent of what we can do gets judged. Sometimes art isn't as therapeutic as people think while creating it.