I Don't Like This Hoya Painting

I Don't Like This Hoya
7 x 6"
aqua oil on wood
NFS

I actually painted this one two days ago. I didn't like it and still don't. But I decided to post it because I learned more from this one than the ones I did like and wanted to share about that. A spiritual friend of mine says that a mistake usually gives you more opportunity to learn than a success, or something like that. Sometimes I will set up a problem at the beginning of a painting to give myself something to fix. The struggle of fixing seems to produce a more expressive and interesting piece that an easy success.

It was late at night when I began this painting and I was tired. Again the light in the studio was unpleasant and although I had an almost animalistic involuntary urge to paint, the urge was polluted with the guilt of the shoulds. As in, "I should do my painting-a-day." This is when the painting-a-day may be a bad thing.

OK so anyway, I tried to get the cats to pose for me but they were not in the mood to create any interesting negative space shapes so I hung a hoya plant and began to paint. I realized that although I really like hoya plants themselves, I do not enjoy painting them. The particular negative shapes they provide are just not my personal bag. So I was violating one of my painting values, which is "paint what you are passionate about." I am passionate about having hoya plants hanging in my home to look at but NOT passionate about painting the negative space between the hoya plants. What DO I like? I like negative shapes that let me blob and smear my brush around. I DON'T like having to precisely get the tippy-tippest point of the brush to maneuver into pointy spaces and to precisely delineate straight narrow stems. So hmmm, that is another reason I love painting philodendrons so much. Oh I also love their personality, their gestures. Like how they almost seem to be making a speech or waving their arms dramatically emphasizing some point or just exclaiming "AKKK!"

Hold on a minute, I will make another post today...