Video of me painting a 12 foot wide painting with a 1/4 inch brush. I don’t exactly remember the moment I made this decision. This may be why golfers have caddies.
Ok, actually I do remember planning this painting. The nurse log is complex with its intersecting branches and moss and miniature leaves in all shapes. If I squint, I see a mass of dark log, then a mass of green and brown in the center band, then gray above. So one choice would be to use a large brush and get those major shapes and gestures down, then rag/scumble/brush on paint of different color/opacity/thickness to create complex visual texture. That’s a time-honored way to do it, fun to do, fun to see. But I want to do something different that challenges my stamina and seems contrary. It’s not action painting as we know it, but it’s silently very active within me. Focus.
I enjoy the thousands of micro-decisions required to create a rich whole after making small marks. The small brush isn’t for re-creating reality. I can’t keep track of which plant is which. But the little brush can capture both the sweeps of the plants and the interesting negative shapes I “feel” as I fill in the panel. I can compare and contrast. Make a mark, react to the mark, make new marks, create a group. Evaluate that group of marks, evaluate groups of marks next to each other. Create a zone of groups of marks. Compare zones. Repeat. Hours upon hours.