Paintings By Kirsten Elizabeth Gilmore Studio Blog

Waiting for an idea to ripen:  

Paintings reborn from other paintings

Do you have paintings that you just can not seem to finish? I advocate putting them on display in the studio, and waiting. The idea will come, with time and a little patience.

Antonio Basso Bosch, aka Yasoy Pinter, a contemporary Spanish painter from a linkedin group I belong to called "Elite Abstract art", blogged recently about his difficult process of destroying one painting in order to use the support to create a new, quite different work. 

His painting went from this:                           to this:

Space Occupancy #20. Mixed media
on burlap canvas (130x190x3cms)

As a painter, I've had such a dramatic transformation happen several times. Perfectionism is a large reason for this:  I don't want to let paintings out of the studio until I'm satisfied. So, some paintings sit, mid-process and stare at me for a few months, and I glare back at them. Then, after an incubation of sorts, the solution becomes clear, and I start working on them again, often taking an entirely new direction. I don't see these as mistakes. I see this as a whole part of the process of making art.

Recently, this painting of mine...  

...became this:  

This painting is available from my etsy shop:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/96834487/original-acrylic-painting-realistic 

For me, the solutions were the following:

Design changes:

1. Change colors and values to support the focal point. The blue walls became a dark gray, putting the emphasis on the tulip still life and the view out of the window. 
2. Create unity through repetition.The gold in the curtains matches the gold in the picture frame and table's edge, unifying the composition. Also, the more muted blues and blue gray worked together. 

Content changes:

1. Make the flowers symbolic, but subtly so. Tulips are "tamed" indoor flowers in a vase, looking out at the wild irises by the beach. Even further "tamed" painted lupine are caged in by the golden frame, and abstract flowers on the curtains are barely even flowers anymore.
2. Use soft light through a window like in The Milkmaid by Jan Vermeer (below).

In short, some paintings need time before solutions present themselves. Like the still too orange tomato, some need to sit on the windowsill awhile and ripen.