7 May 2025
Have also been thinking about intentionality with regard to surface—it seems to me that so many paintings I love do feature surfaces prepared quite intentionally, and yet the way the image ultimately interacts with that surface feels unplanned/unforced. Joseph Yaeger comes to mind again in the way that his forms do feel precise. But the thick gessoed surface creates a topography for the precision of those forms to loosen and bounce, possible rigidity interrupted.
As I've been painting through my own resistance to my original academic figurative foundation, I've been thinking about this a lot; about how I need not obsess over controlling the microscopic play of brushwork on top of the coarse gesso strokes over the grain of the panel to hope for some buzz—it will come as a result of conditions put in place no matter how you handle the paint.