Day 11-19 Fleeting Glimpses & Memories

This project still fascinates me. I realized about half way through the 30 day project that trying to crank out a painting each day just to meet my own self imposed deadline was rather senseless. My normal busy schedule of classes and deadlines for other paintings etc; was already a rather full plate. I started to find myself feeling anxious to get a painting completed just for the sake of getting it posted. After a couple days of real bombs (which were scraped completely) and other obligations that got in my way, I decided that It was alright to change my strategy and I made it a new personal goal to complete the 30 paintings as time allowed for it. I wanted to learn and gain new ideas from doing the project. Spending time thinking about what I was trying to capture in each painting from my color notes and photo references made the most logical sense. I tend to be very direct with my painting procedure, but I am a thinker. I think about a painting a lot before I ever touch brush to canvas. 

I personally wish that there were more painters in this world who spent  more time thinking about what they are trying to say in a painting along with giving more thought to composition, color, type of light etc instead of just copying everything before them. Or worse, and we see it a lot; painters who essentially just copy themselves over and over and over again. I've found myself doing it at times. It's actually rather easy to fool ourselves into believing that we are seeing things with fresh new eyes and approaching each painting with an emotional investment, when actually we are just on auto pilot. We reach for the same green, we make the same marks, the trees have to look a certain way, water is done like this etc etc. We start to paint from habit instead of painting from instinct and emotion. What results are formulaic paintings or paintings that look like everybody else. There are a lot of those paintings floating around. This is not a rant but an observation. 

For me personally, when I find that I am not emotionally invested in a painting, I take a step back to ask myself why. The painting experience is about having a conversation with my subject matter and therefore, expressing something that might not be readily seen in the painting but felt. Paintings that evoke an emotion from the viewer are the paintings that matter. Without that connection, a painter is just recording things on a canvas. Robert Henri said that the world doesn't need another 'pretty' picture and is he ever right. 

The Fleeting Glimpses & Memory project has made me have to think harder back in the studio about that emotional connection that I felt looking at the subject. Even color notations that I made on location took on a whole different meaning back in the studio. The notes gave me a starting point, but the actual color mixes that eventually were applied to the canvas were more about trying to recall the feeling of the color and were never exactly as they had been written down. I think all good paintings tend to evoke an impression or sense of place beyond just stating the obvious. Wouldn't it be an amazing feat if a painter could thoroughly intoxicate the viewers senses with this intangible quality.

Here are photos of paintings 11 through 19. The images are also posted on my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Lussier-Plein-Air-Painting-Workshops/397547803746

and also on my Dailypaintworks gallery page http://www.dailypaintworks.com/allartists/#/artist=lussier,david&mode=search