When You Have No Choice

 

I know it sounds strange, but for me, art can occur in many ways.

Sometimes, it just feels like a tap that I open and the creativity flows out through me into the artwork, something like a stream of conciousness thing...

The pieces surrounding this paragraph occurred this way... 

Sometimes, an idea occurs to me that I want to experiment with just to see how it would work out. 

After a family vacation where I drove down through Washington and Oregon, I was fascinated by the patterns in the shells I saw and wanted to see if I could incorporate them into paintings... 

I still really like that idea and I might go back to it and try again, who knows....
I saved some shells, and I think I could probably do more with it than I did...

Anyway, back to my point here.  I have some paintings that don't seem to want to be completed, and they can sometimes work out very well, or die an early death (in my eyes, anyway!).  Some of my own paintings I don't like, just like anyone else, I have favourites.  I have been known to give up on certain paintings and just paint over them and try something else.

Some pieces can change quite dramatically as they metamorphisize into something other than what they started out to be.  There are wishy washy paintings, and then there's another group that is very different.  They are images that pop into my head and just keep coming back to me like they won't be dismissed.

This is fairly rare, actually, I'll know an image wants to be created if it keeps coming back like a repeating dream.  I can count these images and they generally stand out for me.

 

In the last few days, It's happened again, and I literally had to do some research into anatomy and musculature in order to execute a rendition of the image that keeps appearing in my brain!

I've managed to do a first run at it, and I'm pretty happy with how it looks, but it's not finished.  I've reached that point where there's a freshness and power to it that I could lose if I overwork it.  Sigh.  You see what I mean, I like it the way it is (see below), but I think I'll leave it alone until I figure out whether I want to elaborate on it or not...

 

Images by Teresa Young:

1. Flight of the Humblebee - April 2002,  2. Blue Abstract - June 2002,  3. Oregon Coast - August 2002,  4. Blue Emotions- July 2002,  5. Flight of Fantastic - November 2001,  6. Queen of Thorns - August 2009,  7. Emergence - September 1998,  8. Exposing Your Inner Child - in progress.