Post 33: How to make a painting

My whole thing with writing is not that I do it, but that I get to it, pause on the edge of it, and just dwell there. I think about the mystical “how” to do it. Which then makes me think of the “how” in painting, and the way that this “how” gets pulled through the entire painting process for me. (Heavy air quotes should be added to “process,” since using the word seems to imply more knowledge about what’s going on than I have.) The painting “how” (How do you make a painting?) is not a how that I jump off of or let go of as I get started, but is a question that sticks around even as some vague semblance of an answer gets formed. (How much is the “answer” that gets formed always just a guess?)

Also: What happens when you bring a question right up to and then into a possible answer? What does the space of question and answer overlap look like? And, what is an answer that still asks the question that prompted it?

Fallen flower and receipt paper touch ever so slightly

Thinking about “how to make a painting” brought to mind something like this:

Point A is a beginning at either something or nothing. Either entity can be used to start, which makes things very free and fun but also kind of disastrously tricky. 

Between A and B is a nothing-filled space. To me, this means that actions can still be taking place in this arena, but that they’re largely void of meaning. As in: a certain color may enter, an image may be added, a shape cut down, but without explanation, without reason. Maybe something like taking a walk has a similar lack of explicit purpose to it. I do wonder if it’s especially important for there to be a lot of this nothing space in painting-making for me because of my want for paintings to be first and foremost about nothing. Can a something--a tangible object like a painting--ever be mostly about nothing? Perhaps the continued endeavor and strife of my painting results from the ultimate impossibility of this. Though I do like the tension that seems to be automatically included in attempts to fulfill an unreachable goal. Mostly, it’s that I have no “about” to provide a painting with--so the unknown challenge of trying to make a something without an about is what I'm faced with. And the only way forward is by wading through a lot of nothing space. (These are statements but also questions).

I think I arrive at painting without an “about” (I’m trying to think of other wordings for this–without content, without a message?) because I don’t want to make a painting with removable meaning–meaning that could be separated and then thought about in a manner that's divorced from the painting itself. If a painting is going to provoke thinking, I want the painting and the thinking to be right next to each other, not with any space in-between. I’m reminded of two theories of naming I came across a while back (I’m so often reminded of things in the course of a blog post.) First is the descriptivist theory of naming, which equates a name to a series of descriptions that fit it (the example used is the name “Aristotle” being equal to “the great philosopher” or “teacher of Alexander the Great” or “author of Metaphysics”--built up by the things associated with the person). This is what I don’t want a painting to be–translatable is what this feels like, with the descriptions acting as substitutes for the name itself. Secondly, the causal theory of naming connects a name to the named thing’s origin and the transmission of the name's usage over time (in this case, “Aristotle” was the name given to this person by his mom and has continued to be meaningful because of various people throughout the course of Aristotle's life using that name to refer to him.) I like the the idea of linking painting with this system of naming, where meaning comes from the thing's initial seed--not from the things that branch off of it. I see this as a requirement for a painting to be present and pointed to in order to be talked about.

Point B is what I call “ask to see if someone else can make the painting.” I’ve never actually done this (though I’m definitely going to put it into action now), but the feeling this stands for actually describes a really crucial point on this timeline. This figurative idea of asking someone else to do the painting halts the attempted forward movement of painting and turns it around. I am no longer trudging through, drilling further and further downward in hopes of finding what can make the painting a painting; I’ve turned around, am driving home, and I start taking on the feeling that someone or something else will enable the painting to sort itself out. The intentionality of trying (the trudging and the drilling)--and the heavy weight that this brought on--gets removed. 

Then, something magical (dare I say magical?) happens between B and C. It’s not describable because like I said I’ve decided to turn around and go back home at this point, and this is in other words a stage of moving backwards, and there’s no coherent way to make language move backwards for it to reveal what is actually happening here. I say moving backwards because the removal of trying and intentionality reverses the direction that the entire process has been moving in. It’s as if someone else actually did secretly come in and sort things out because of how hard it is to state what takes place in this stage. Surely something opposite to what was happening before it.

Point D is the feeling of having reached painting status and all that. There’s absolutely nothing to state here, only something to see here.

I totally forgot to address the small rectangular area next to the nothing space. If there was room to write this on the diagram, I’d have marked the bottom-right corner of the whole rectangle as "D" to designate something like "the idea of the finished painting"--the intangible perception of where that finish might be (somewhere further ahead) that you (I) never reach. What would painting be without it being attuned to some far-off, unreachable space?

To revisit the B to C stage, I'd further describe it as the action of going back into the previously traversed nothing space to find the painting. This almost sounds like it’s a retracing of steps. I’ve been thinking about why I approach painting from the point of view that it’s lost and I’m trying to find it. Certainly part of a painting taking place as this searching for me seems to come from my starting point being a question (the “how”). But then, what nature does a painting take on in trying to answer a question? Does starting at a question always mold it into the shape of an answer?

The backwards movement in this B to C segment additionally seems to contribute to the question of painting continuing to be present throughout the time of painting-making, still being there at the end. On the one hand, I think, why would a question ever really go away? Where would it go? But the more relevant query seems to be: What does a question do when a supposed answer comes onto the scene? One thing I feel is that the presence of the question keeps the painting filled up with nothingness. Maybe it's explicitly trying to take up enough space so there's not room for much (any) somethingness to come in. A somethingness that I don't have and so wouldn't be able to really mean.

How does a question take up space?