On the Way to Becoming

On the Way to Becoming. 51" x 51" x 2" on end, 36" if squared. Acrylic on cradled wood panel

Created in fall of 2023, On the Way to Becoming is all about color and movement. I'm not sure if its name tells you more about how I feel about my art process, or about the resultant upbeat, evolutionary vortex of a painting. Maybe a little of both!

I think sometimes abstract painting is similar to how some writers talk about their fiction works — and actually how some people think about child raising. There's a painting waiting to emerge, and the trick is to get out of the way and let it become what it needs to be. Which isn't to say we have no hand in it...

On the way to becoming itself, On the Way to Becoming went through quite a few stages — I'll share just a few here:

I started by building a textural underlayer.

Then following the lines of the underlayer, I lay down green and teal as
​a basis to build on.

I considered this next phase "the ugly stage" of the painting (there always is one). I was adding contrast and depth and broadening the palette, and things got too muddy and vertical... it made me uncomfortable!

So I worked to add richer color and more white, and to bring everything together. I was almost there!! But which way to turn it? It actually took a few weeks of turning it around daily to figure out what really worked. But with the help of a friend...
​Voilà!