12.30.18

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I feel caught between the dark and the light.

The subject matter feels dark — richer colors, more shading, dark, heavy lines, a lot more scribbling and overpainting — layer over layer. Until I finally bring in the light (layers and layers of white paint trying to create definition and edit out everything that feels wrong — a sense of order to the senseless).

The model (Jason) feels complicated and unknowable. I’m very conscious of that. Mystery in plain sight. He’s open, vulnerable, emotional. He’s closed, aloof, calculating. There is a lot going on with him. He wants control, but he wants to give in. My responses to him are positive tempered with apprehension. I keep thinking I can’t really see him. I look at all the drawings and they all look similar. Did he only let me see one aspect of him? Or is that all I wanted to see?

As I paint, the surface goes through layers and layers of convulsions — more dark paint, more dark lines. I did put down a lot of black paint right from the start. Why did that seem necessary? I fight with the canvas to see what is there besides the figure. I’m seduced by the colors, the richness, the trouble. I want to stop when I think it looks pleasing and pretty.

But something isn’t right.

I’m not seeing what’s there in the space between. I’m trying too hard. It’s all in pieces. Broken. Drifting apart. I want it to be nice, but my impulses, my painting, my conversation with the canvas is anything but nice. I feel mad. Nothing is cooperating. The things I want to preserve fade away or break apart. Nothing feels connected. Layers superimposed. Figures hidden. Figures distorted. Figures erased.

And what keeps going through my head is a question that I often ponder. Is this something I want or is this something I need?

Maybe working on the Jason series will help me answer that question. Dark/want and light/need. Or is it the other way around? Or is the answer somewhere between the black and the white?

One down (I think). Five more to go.