As I write this the bad day in the studio has gladly passed. But it happened, and I think its important to talk about bad days in the studio and maybe next time I have one I will be filled with hope as I reflect on this blog post.
So, I bought all my nice new art supplies and was ready to paint. I had just been to the Júlio Pomar gallery and was feeling inspired. I found some mdf wood in the street and decided to save some $$ by painting on that instead of canvas. MISTAKE NUMBER ONE. For as long as I can remember, I have always been trying to paint grand things on annoying surfaces, and I could hear my mum’s voice in my head ‘You need to put an undercoat on that or the paint won’t stick. You need an undercoat. Make sure you undercoat that before you try to paint’. So I ignored her as I always have, blindly and lazily hoping it would just work out, but alas, the paint wasn’t showing up as much I wanted it to. I decided to use the gesso I had bought to do the undercoat that was clearly needed.
And so I was undercoating the mdf and about halfway through realised I had almost used up a whole tube of gesso on this damn piece of scrap wood. Once again I heard my mother’s voice in my head ‘Don’t waste the gesso! STOP USING THE GESSO AS WHITE PAINT! HEY WHERE DID ALL THE GESSO GO?’ and I started to understand her point of view with a little more clarity.
I finished the undercoat. ‘It’s ok’, I thought optimistically to myself, ‘you can do a really ground breaking painting and make this worth while’. And so I began to paint. And I soon realised that the beige and golden ochre paint I had excitedly bought at the Chinese store were actually super savage, sticky, toxic exterior paint that wouldn’t wash off my hands and brushes. Most frustrating. Then I proceeded to angrily persevere with the painting assuming that at some point it would become really good. It didn’t.
I had to leave the studio.
With sticky brown hands and a furrowed brow I walked down the slippery cobblestone street in my Birkenstocks thinking about a painting I had seen as a teenager. It was in the artist studio at my mum’s friend’s house. I think it was by John Olsen, it was the beginnings of a perfectly good looking portrait of a man in a chair. Some of it was fairly detailed, some of it clearly not finished. It was called ‘Bad day at the studio’, which was evident because the artist had obviously had a meltdown and scrawled ‘BAD DAY AT THE STUDIO’ across it in big ratty letters. I remember wondering why someone would ruin such a promising painting in such an aggressive and unfixable way, but I also loved what an absolute mess it was.
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The next day I went at the painting with a bottle of black ink. The golden ochre paint was still sticky and tarnished my hands again, unpleasant. I HATE HAVING DIRTY HANDS.
I think I actually like the painting. It’s just different to what I normally do. Maybe because there was not drool or hairy legs I felt like it was missing something. I was reminded of that creative process meme that goes around every now and then.
Except I didn’t think I was shit, I thought that STUPID PAINT WAS SHIT, and I don’t think the finished painting is awesome, but I do appreciate it now.
I suppose you’d like to see the painting.
Mumma said……….xxxxx