HOW I PAINT
First: I go to my studio. I love my studio. It was originally the one-room cabin I bought in 1980 – built by an islander: framed with logs from the beach, walls of cedar siding. No inside walls, no insulation, no power, no water. A normal- enough abode in those times. When OPALCO made some sort of large billing irregularity around that time, it chose to right the wrong by extending electricity to power-less areas at a greatly reduced cost. So my road got electricity! After a while, my cabin also got some insulation and inside walls.
After some switch-arounds, etc. in my life, I am living in the little one-room home with Joe – 1983. Still no water or bathroom. Life continues with outhouse, and showers in town at the docks, laundromat, etc. Time goes by. We add on a room. Then another room. We get a bathroom. We get running water. We also start building our current house across the yard from the cabin. After 14 years of building, we move in, and the cabin becomes our studios – Joe has the first room we added on for his, the second room becomes an office, and the original 1980’s space is my studio...Now with large windows like a clerestory up above. The ceiling is high, the light comes in over my right shoulder as I paint.
The space is dripping-wet soaked in memories. Just drenched. Decades of life. Alone there. With Joe. Then with Joe and Noe. Now me alone again, painting.
Second: Joe has made me yet another exquisite linen canvas.
I am the luckiest painter. The luckiest. The care, attention, skill, inventiveness that he puts into each canvas grants it a personal and devotional quality that can’t be bought. In of itself, it is art.
Third: I put the canvas on the wall of my studio.
There is a vertical series of nails to hang it on; I can move it to different heights as I paint on different sections of the canvas.
I start out placing the canvas with the long side horizontal. Hmmm...let’s try it with long side vertical. Hmmmm.... OK, let’s go with it this way, it just feels right this way.
(This is my painting process in a nutshell: It just feels right this way.)
Fourth: Since it’s a new painting, I will clean my palette = a big piece of glass on a table: scrape it clean with a razor blade. Put away all the paints into their proper place, remove all the clutter on the table, maybe empty the trash and sweep the floor a bit.
Fifth: I’m ready to start a new painting now.
I have no idea what it will be. I choose a color – not for any reason , a color occurs to me. With a brush or palette knife,
I put paint on the canvas, covering an area until I’m ready to stop – maybe it’s a large area, maybe it’s a small area. Then another color, another area. Now I have 2 sort-of shapes. These two colors/shapes have formed the first relationship of the painting, with their particular way of interacting with one another and with the remaining blank canvas.
Sixth through One-thousandth: More colors, more shapes, more interactions.
During the one-thousands: The heart of painting.
My painting has become, over time and by intention, 100% non-verbal. I figured that if something can be said with words, then it should be said with words. I’m interested in what cannot be said with words. Hence, it’s hard to talk about it.
At an opening, someone(s) will come up and ask me: “Tell me about your paintings....walk around with me and tell me about each painting....what were you thinking here.....what is this one about...what is your favorite.....why do you like this one.....is that supposed to be a block of cheese in that corner...what does this one mean...what emotion were you trying to elicit?”
I become a block of cheese myself, an inarticulate uncomfortable block of cheese. My only honest answer is: “I don’t know...I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular... just thoughts, like any other time.” I feel rude and evasive, rather than helpful and forthcoming. But the paintings really are not about anything. I don’t really have a favorite. I wasn’t trying to elicit any particular emotion. I don’t know what the meaning of this painting is, do you? No, that’s not cheese, it’s just a shape.
They are simply shapes (although sometimes they do wander into plant-like imagery). Shapes within a context, within fields of color and texture. Any given shape may change many times. Sometimes it is background, then shifts to foreground, then maybe to mid-ground. Frequently it will disappear entirely.
During the one-thousands, the sheer magic of painting never ends. It is magic! Because of the relationships.
Within a painting, each shape, every edge, every color and color variation, each texture, each way the light hits a particular pigment – everything affects everything else. A change anywhere affects everywhere. Balance and shift, balance and shift. Sometimes, even the TINIEST fleck of a change rearranges the entire gestalt of the whole painting. It’s freaky. It’s magic. It’s endlessly fascinating.
So, what guides me?
Well, I have my training and experience in the fundamentals of color and the creation of space and movement. That guides me. That is a language, a language that enables conversation.
The conversation is long and goes in many directions at once, turning back on itself. It revises, repeats, meanders, digresses, makes a point, disputes that point. You know that friend, that particular friend? You can sit down at 6 pm with some wine; next thing you know, it’s 2 am, you’re both pretty drunk, you have talked about everything. What you said played off on what she said, back and forth, in and out, and still there is more to say. Always more to say.
It’s that kind of conversation. One with no real beginning and no real end. Yet entirely engrossing. How does a painting come to an end? I guess it’s when there is nothing more to be said.
A sign that something is alive is the fact that it moves. Movement = life. When all the shapes, edges, color, textures align into movement, a rather constant movement, within a space, then the painting is alive. There are no dead spots, places where the eye stops, trapped. The eye keeps moving.
Then the painting is at an end. But.... Later, I look at it again, and suddenly there is more to say. Which eventually leads to another end, another movement-filled life.
Finally, finally, there is silence. There truly is nothing more to be said, and the painting is at THE END.
How to look at my paintings:
Assume they are introverts. They are not going to come out and grab you. You must enter their world. If you want to.
They will not force you to.
There is an un-named sense that is not “vision” and is not “touch” – it is a combination of the two, simultaneously active. This is the sense I paint with, and it is the sense with which to experience the paintings.
I am not a particularly observant person. I don’t look for something to paint, yet I am infiltrated by my surroundings, by my home.
Our house is in a clearing in the woods. Vegetation overflows around us – fir trees, cedars, alders, maples, willows, thickets of salmonberry and elderberry, wetland grasses, nettles. Bare branches crisscrossing, fallen limbs and trees, trees broken off and still standing – a cacophony of messy nature.
There are no vistas: all is seen from a close-up viewpoint, all the edges, the complexity along those edges. There is no horizon line visible. Nothing stands out as a focal point. One never quite knows where to look.
So, one just keeps looking, here, there, here again, eyes always in motion. The eye gathers all those disparate bits of vision, flickering, changing, moving—and somehow assembles them into a semblance of unity.
The closest analogy to how I paint is how I garden. All these vignettes, all these parts and textures, one moving into another. There is no particular way to go through the garden, just keep moving along and looking.
My paintings of mine are exactly that way.
All images and words are © Dana Roberts 2020