Brushing Teeth

Started a new image last night, based on a photograph taken of Allison brushing her teeth while holding Caleb.

Initial "blank" canvass consisting of  some textured panels as well as new ones. It's hard to see it from the distance this photo was taken, but both panels are heavily textured, the one on the top right more so than the larger one to it's left. I am hoping that this texture provides some interesting occurances when I begin to render on top of them. 

Most of the representational stuff in the studio has either been single portraits or the tea pots and irons. So this arrangement of figures was selected because it will prove to be more of a challenge relating the forms to one another as well as balancing proportions. 

As I have been looking at the work in the studio here are some thoughts I have been getting from it lately:

 

TIME

1) Time  documented by applying paint to the panels — a document of their own creation/each stroke, drip accumulating over days/weeks/months/years. Time is documented and remembered because these panels came to be over time.

2)  Time documented through the recording of  life  through the use of rendered images, (Allison brushing teeth, parents, family, objects of meaning, etc). Time is documented and remembered through the recording of these things

SPACE

Space comes into play because both types of time documentation initially occupy their own space. Which later are reworked to share space and then finally are reassembled and combined  into a new image/painting by arranging panels into a composition. Essentially when panels are combined different spaces are being combined and new space is carved out. 

MEMORY

Memory in our minds works as I have been told is not like recalling a file from a filing cabinet with all of the needed information in a single folder, but more like a complex matrix or database where different components of a single memory are pulled from a variety of sources/spaces and then reassembled into the desired occurrence or memory. I am beginning to see these panels as being similar to those spaces containing  chucks of memory data/documents of time that are recalled or combined to form a memory or thought, which in my efforts results in a visual composition.

I know this sounds a bit like b.s. right now, but I think that there is something in this mix of time/space/memory that was not a thought I chose to put behind the work but rather the thoughts I am getting from doing it and looking at it. That feels honest. To be truthful I almost don't like typing this stuff out because the vague connections about it in my mind sound so much stronger without having to articulate them in concrete terms. But I suppose that's okay. For now the rambeling above is simply a way for me to attempt to explain something I don't really understand at the present moment. 

Perhaps I like it more because I don't understand it.