First, I should give you a small background on July/August for me.
One month ago I was let go from my full-time job at an advertising agency in Philadelphia. I did accounting and administrative work (odd for an artist to be an accountant as well, eh?). It was nothing I would call a passion, but I would call it a job. It is also the place where my arts organization tbdartists.com was given birth, and the people there really pushed me to continue to pursue my art career more.
So the past month has been filled with bumming at the beach, interviews, and some painting. I started off excited for new opportunities, and felt this was a time in my life where I could REALLY figure out what it is I wanted to do. I interviewed for accounting positions, all the while wondering if this was really the path I wanted to take. Where do I want to be, how do I get there? I am still not sure. I took walks around Philadelphia taking everything in and wondered when it would come to me.
So then this week started. Monday started with me once again visiting sites applying for employment. Then I realized I had applied for all of these jobs. I will be honest. It kind of pissed me off.
So here’s where the fun part begins.
I paint in my garage. It’s a cute little garage in the Mayfair section of Philadelphia. Filled with rolled up painted on canvases through the years (I really just need to have a yard sale). It can get hot in the summer and cold in the winter, yesterday it was hot. I walked in to notice I ran out of mineral spirits. Painting in oil without mineral spirits or turps is not really a fun thing to do. Let’s be honest, it gets messy, and I’m already messy enough as an artist. So I have a small gesso party on a medium sized linen, roughly 34×48. While most will use oil ground on linen, I don’t mind using gesso either. It leaves a more rough texture, but it dries so much faster.
So as the gesso dried on the linen, I head to grab some mineral spirits while trying to figure out the “fruit of the day” aka what I wanted to paint today. Due to the fact that I do not have a job I did not want to spend more money, I was mentally going through my fridge to see what was inside. Nothing caught my eye. So I walk back inside, set everything up and look at the canvases I have around. There is a 10×18 canvas that seems to be calling my name. It screams “Meg paint something sweet on me.” Ok, yes sometimes I feel there is a certain communication between and artist and their work, even if its not started yet. It’s how you know which canvas to use, it’s an intuition.
I revisit the fridge. There is some roman lettuce in a freezer bag, some ham and cheese, left over fajitas, a bunch of saltwater taffy, a bag of Hershey hugs, some yogurt, and jello fruit. I look at the hugs and immediately think “Hugs, not drugs.” I grab three and head to the garage. By this time it’s about 10:30 in the morning. I set up a direct light source and put some white canvas and put down the three Hershey hugs. While the wrapper is interesting as well, just the plain chocolate and white chocolate candies capture my attention.
My work has lately dealt with objects on a plain light background. It is usually various fruits, split and paired off to demonstrate relationships. Hershey hugs to me, and using three, represent me and my two older sisters. I begin the painting using cadmium red, alizarin crimson, and raw umber, with a little cobalt blue. I start by basically laying out the dark chocolate shapes and shadow. As I begin working the flake white into the painting I realize I need more white. I look around the studio/garage and happen to notice the various white primer house paints lurking. I figure, why not? I choose a latex gloss and begin slathering it into the painting. The way it reacts to the oil is a beautiful sense of working against each other, but after being worked into each other enough, they begin to melt into one another. This set off a reaction in my mind, setting my off into a sublime state of painting without thinking.
I begin another painting. I take more Hershey Hugs and lay them out in two rows of three and one row of two. I paint using the same method as before with the latex paint as well. I soon then begin another painting of salt water taffies. I finish with one giant Hershey Hug, completing a marathon of painting four paintings. All varying sizes two large, one medium and one small.
It was progress for me, my style had evolved and become even more Wayne Thiebuad but I know the way the paintings were executed and how the texture was created were my own. The best feeling for an artist is to hit that moment in their work where they evolve and realize their new skills in application and emotion regarding painting. While I might not have a job, having moved forward in my work and hitting a new plane keeps me optimistic about what is ahead.
Meg Coonelly
www.tbdartists.com
Next Week: Ghosts of Artists Passed (Wait, they passed? When! Damn.)
