A Painter’s Choice: Polished, Painted or Sketched

A Painter’s Choice: Polished, Painted or Sketched

I’m entitling this blog post this way to give myself the opportunity to talk about something in my work (and I imagine in many other painters as well), that really nags at me sometimes: the level of finish in a painting.I seem to have this “problem”, I’m not exactly sure I’d call it a full-blown problem, where I seem to have varying levels of “finish” in a painting. The paintings I end up spending time on in the studio from various studies, etc. becomes overly rendered and has the potential to go flat. The smaller paintings I do are finished then and there on the spot, a one-shot deal. While often times these paintings are lacking detail or a more finished look, they have a fresh spontaneous quality that is important to me because it captures a moment the way I experienced it and want you, the viewer, to experience it as well.  The painted painting, would be my ideal: it would both be more rendered with some detail, but maintain a fresh quality that is captured there in the moment.It’s a delicate balance, and one I’ve decided only comes through endless practice, study and a slow evolving understanding of light and weilding paint brushes and paint.Here is a recent sketch done in one of my favorite spots. This is a place that I want to do an even larger painting of, so I keep returning here, haunting this alley.Acqueduct Along Via Togliatti11x13″Oil on Panel© Kelly Medford, 2012 This is by no means finished. In fact I set a one hour time limit for myself in creating this. Why did I do that? To see what was the most important in capturing the light and feel of this place. I knew that there was no way I would get everything in, but I wanted to get this light in this way and within the hour it had already escaped me.Here is a previous version of this painting from almost exactly one year ago.Along the Acqueduct, Palmiro Togliatti9.5″ x 12″Oil on Panel© Kelly Medford, 2011 Ironically enough I wrote a blog post including this painting, calling it a “dud.” Now, no painting is really a dud, in the sense that each painting teaches me something that I can then carry into the next one. In fact, this painting is similar to the one I just did and I really seem to like those clouds! I love the light here and I love the little sheds facing the acqueduct, the light falling and that blue sky with the buildings in the background.In fact, this is one of those places that really represents Rome for me, the old meshed together with the new, the countryside meeting urban wildness, all together in this unplanned way like a wild urban garden. Rome for me is a big untamed garden, left to grow and sprawl, to evolve while creating its own natural and manmade aestetic simultaneously. It’s beautiful and strange and endlessly appealing to me.The more I paint, the more I realize I have to learn, the farther I have to go, the more I get an idea of what I want painting to be. Painting for me is telling the story of a place through its special quality of light and design. The details aren’t always important, but I want everything to be included. My ideal, what I want my work to evolve into is the “painting,” not the sketch or the polished piece, but a wildly controlled expression of a moment.