d’Arte Board

Loosely stated, my art process comes down to 2 basic stages, with a lot of feedback between the two.  I call these the IDEAS stage and the STUFF TO MAKE OTHER STUFF WITH stage.  Or maybe just the Stuff stage. 

The Idea stage usually happens while walking, commuting or trying to sleep.  When I’m away from art, visualizing out of boredom or as stray notions hit me.  These are the architect’s blueprints.

The Stuff stage is the hands-on creation of the materials that make up the building the Idea blueprints describe. 

The 2 stages are often completely separate.  I make Stuff without consideration to the Ideas it will be used with.  Once I have some Ideas, I will use what Stuff is available.  Obviously sometimes the ideas dictate that specific Stuff is made, but even then, I usually have leftover Stuff afterwards that will have to be incorporated elsewhere later.  And sometimes I have to come up with Ideas to get rid of Stuff I haven’t used in 2 years.  To make room for Stuff I have to create for a specific idea. 

Here’s 1 of 12 purple sheets I made a few weeks ago to clear out some tubes of paint I hadn’t used in years. To make room for some of the paint tubes I recently inherited from my Grandfather:

Or sometimes I make Stuff to use up leftover pieces of other Stuff.  Here’s 1 of 11 sheets of linear collages I made out of leftover sheets from
the “Gossip” piece a few weeks ago:

Do I have any idea what I’m going to use this Stuff in? No. I’ve had a few Ideas, but nothing too convincing. Chances are I’ll put it away and come back across it when looking for Stuff to use with a new Idea.

More Stuff after the jump.

Masking tape from the dropcloth posted last week. I think I ended up with 7 or 8 of these sheets.

This is a painting on paper. I don’t remember why I made it. Maybe I was bored? I dunno. I may have wanted something to match the purple. The stripes are made with masking tape (of the sort that covers the sheet at the top of the post). I have a lot of random sheets like this that I don’t remember why I painted them. Not that it matters.

I cleaned my pallette knife on this paper:

Here’s 2 paintings on canvas that I made to sketch out some color ideas for a piece a friend asked for a year ago:

I literally have drawers full of stuff like this. To say nothing of the closets of paint on canvas. Or paintings given to me by others.

I also have notebooks filled with ideas. Maybe the area I need to improve most upon is finding ways to work the 2 together more often. Use some of my surplus of both to create a surplus of art. Maybe.

Or maybe I’ll see where it leads me.

-JD