Thursday, October 30, 2008

Bad Paintings of the World.....


Unite! There is hope for life after bad art. Presenting painting number 2 in the canvas reclamation project; The End of Old Mission in October. The painting that is now securely entombed forever (hopefully) under this new offering was an abomination, an affront to my own artistic ego, i.e., it was a painting that for various reasons DIDN'T WORK OUT. Paintings that don't work out can be problematic. After all, just what do you do with them? I mean I really don't want them hanging around my studio bumming me out, providing me with tangible proof of that day's particular artistic ineptitude, nor do I want to lavish them on friends & family who will gasp at the magnitude of such an extravagant offering and then promptly stash them in a closet or worse yet become garage sale fodder. So just what becomes of those "process" pieces? I have it on good authority that one nationally known (who here will remain unknown) painter was cavalierly just throwing his "process pieces" in the trash, only to one day find the garbage man rifling through the best of the worst paintings! Hello EBAY. Said painter has found one more reason to love his table saw. Other painters archive and store the stuff, I choose to reuse, much to the horror of my husband. SO that conversation went kind of like this...Me -"blah, blah, blah canvas reclamation project." Husband - "You are DOING WHAT to finished paintings???" In his ever optimistic way he suggested that a mythical someone, somewhere, just might want to buy one of those process pieces. To which I suggested to him that he sign HIS name on them. And I see he has yet to take me up on that! :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think this is most like your best piece of work yet! I must paint "over" my less than successful works more often rather than throw them out. Why waste a good piece of canvas? Duh. Try scrapping the painting off next time. I found a great way to end up looking at the painting simply as that and nothing more.

frank

Margo Burian said...

why thank you dah-link. I've been known to scape off a painting or too as well. That works so much better when the paint is still wet though! :)