When I first started painting, I was primarily drawn to working on pieces of dogs and the Virgin Mary. Yes, you read that correctly. It was an odd pairing, and I'm still not quite sure what drew me to those subjects. The best I can guess is that they both allowed me to get at their souls. They made me feel something.
I didn't have much of a direction in terms of subject matter in my paintings until my senior year of college. I always painted whatever moved me, without paying much attention to whether or not everything I painted "went" together. I went by the general non-theme of "I like stuff that's old." Then my professors called me on my crap. They started bugging me about making sure my pieces had a concept, that they weren't just pretty pictures of pretty things. I needed that. I still didn't have much of a unifying theme, but at least I began to think more deeply about what I was doing. My pieces began to have more intent behind them.
Then I took my senior seminar class. It involved us students getting deeper into our art on an intellectual level and learning more about our post-grad options in the art world as well as the business of art. I finally found a unifying theme for my art, and began to think seriously about individual identity and the way people represent themselves to the those around them.
But old habits die hard. I found some old family photos and got very excited about painting them. I completed one large piece of my paternal grandparents and great-grandmother, then started on another piece based on a different photo of my grandfather before my professor gently reminded me of my newfound direction and that the pieces of my relatives didn't exactly "go" with my other work. This would have been of little concern to me, except that I had a senior show to prepare for and wall space to fill. The painting of my grandfather was set aside, and I cranked out a bunch of work. The show went well. Everything went together.
See? Unified. (The piece on the far right is not mine, in case you were wondering.)
Then I graduated from college and adult life hit me hard. I didn't paint much. I carried the half-finished painting of my grandfather to my new apartment, back home to Sacramento, and back again to the Bay Area. It sat taunting me, mostly. I almost never felt inspired to work on it, and when I did I easily got overwhelmed by the fact that I didn't like the way it looked and didn't know how to make that any better. Over two years went by.
Some paintings I end up giving up on. I don't like to do it, but sometimes I know in my heart that it's just not going to work. This was not one of those paintings. Maybe it's because it's an old family photo, maybe it's because I'm sometimes stubborn, or maybe it's just some kind of artist instinct. But I knew that eventually I'd be able to call this one done.
I'm trying to make some more room in my little studio. I have a lot of paintings started, but nowhere close to finished. I put my old painting on the easel and studied the little black and white photo and its scanned counterpart.
The original
This painting was tough for a variety of reasons. First, I hate landscapes. A lot. Grass and background bore me to tears. That's why most of my backgrounds are solid or non-existent. But for this, the background is important. Second, I had a lot of issues with my source image. While the photo itself is great, the original is tiny. We're talking 2"x3". It's difficult enough to capture facial expressions and details when I have an awesome, large, crisp source image. This was not one of those. It's also in black and white. I'm great at picking up colors in my source image...but that's only when there are colors for me to see. The third difficult thing about this piece is that it's of a family member. Not just any family member, but my dad's late father: a man somewhat legendary in our family. So I couldn't fudge anything.
All of this means it was a somewhat emotional process the other night as I pushed through my doubt, my insecurities, my hatred of painting shrubbery, and my raging headache to put the final touches on this piece. I'm proud of it. And after all that hesitation and upon final reflection...I think it does go with my other pieces. I've shifted a bit from the idea of choice and am working more on the idea of identity. In this case, the identity of my grandfather. His name was John Lewis Pelgen; we affectionately call him JLP. He was a doctor, a pilot, a husband, and a father to four kids. He died in a plane crash when my dad was eight. I look at pictures of him and see my dad's smile and hands. I am told I have his eyes. But that's just about all I know. He's largely a mystery to me, just like he is to any viewer of this piece.
JLP and an unidentified pup