the light in my kitchen at 6am is the only reason i get up that early
I've been waking up at 6 for the past week just to paint the same corner of my kitchen counter. The lime slice from last night, the steel tumbler from morning chai, the way the sun hits the grout between the tiles. It lasts maybe forty minutes and then it's gone, and I know it's ridiculous because I could just take a photo and paint it later. But it's not the same. There's something about catching it while it's happening, while the light is actually moving across the surface.
I think this is my current obsession, I can only paint things in the moment they exist. If I photograph them and come back later, the feeling is gone. The urgency is gone. And the painting comes out flat.
Anyone else have a weird time-of-day thing they can't let go of? Or am I the only one waking up unreasonably early for a lime slice and a steel glass 🙂
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This is the opposite of ridiculous. You're describing the whole reason any of us do this. That forty minutes is the real subject, the lime slice is just the excuse.
I've spent my career hauling dead objects into rooms and the thing that makes it work is never the objects. It's the time spent with them. The looking. What you're doing with that corner and that light is the same thing I'm doing with a pile of scrap metal, just faster.
Keep chasing the forty minutes. That's the work.
YES. The lime slice is just the excuse, I love that so much. That's exactly it, the thing you're actually painting is the looking, the time, the fact that you had to be there for it. That's why photos never cut it, they flatten all the living parts out.
I do this thing where I'll paint the same window in my apartment over and over at different times of day and people are like "don't you get bored?" and I'm like no?? the window is barely even the point, it's just a frame for whatever the light is doing that day.
Your scrap metal stuff, I've seen your work, the way you handle rust and shadow is incredible honestly, it's the same muscle. Just slower. You're spending that time with the objects until they tell you what they are. That's not dead at all, that's the opposite of dead.
That's so kind of you to say. Honestly I was half expecting people to tell me to just take the photo and sleep in 🙃
And your work, I've been quietly following your scrap metal series for a while now. The way you get texture out of rust, it's not something you can reference from a photo either. You have to be there, in the light, watching how the oxidation catches. Same thing, different medium.
God, "the lime slice is just the excuse", that's going to stay with me. You've put your finger on something I've been circling for weeks and couldn't name.
And the scrap metal thing, I had to laugh because I think that's the same impulse exactly. Hauling dead objects into rooms, that's such a good way to put it. You're both trying to make something sit up and be alive for a minute, just using different materials.
What do you make? I'm curious now, what's the scrap metal becoming?