1st Pass of a Final Piece

So this painting is 4' x 8', and the scale is critical to the theoretical basis of my work this semester so the pictures really cannot do it much justice but I'll do my best to give an accurate depiction of what's going on here.

Staring at the huge blank canvas before me, it was incredibly difficult to make the first marks.  For whatever reason the sight of such a large area of pure possibility can be slightly paralyzing, and I have this fear that my influence will ruin that purity.  To help my self, I chose one of the intuition exercise to serve as a map for emotional state:

Now I am not using this as a 1:1 sketch for an exact composition, but more of a guide to assist me in honing in on a particular emotional memory.  In doing this exercises, I am able to quickly sketch and express the emotions I latch onto and have been able to remain true to them without the distractions of my conscious mental processes.  Working on the piece in its large scale state, I am unable to maintain a continuous expressive state, simply because I have to pause so often to prepare materials.  So instead, before I start throwing things on the canvas, I stop and meditate on these sketched images to tune my intuition back into the region of memory and response that I achieved during the sketch and then start letting my body create what it wants.  I literally use no constraints as to what I can put on the canvas: if I want to throw dirt and plans in with the paint I go outside and dig a hole and mash the dirt into the canvas.  If I want plaster to dig through I mix up some paint and plaster and glob it on and start digging through it, or if I want to cut through the surfaces I find the nearest object and started scratching and grinding away.  The process is incredibly liberating, and much like the photograms reveals much more than I ever could have consciously chosen to demonstrate.

As I worked on the piece, my meditations on my time during undergrad began to take the form of a mad scramble, as if I were digging desperately to uncover something that I knew I needed though not knowing what it was  This is what it was like for me, especially in those first few years on my own as the strict rules that governed my younger years broke down and I built a new framework to live by.  As this concept took root in my mind, I naturally began to look to earth and organic matter to form the surface upon which I literally dug through to uncover previous layers on the canvas.  I plan to continue to incorporate different materials to build mass on the surface and to further create the sense of history and discovery that I have begun.