30 Paintings in 30 Days

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” ~Vincent Van Gogh

  It's a practice I had heard about and even tried once. Unsuccessfully. Why try to paint thirty paintings in thirty days, wouldn't that take the fun out of painting? Would there be enough time to give to each painting? What can be gained?

  January 1. I painted a 8" square oil from a trip to Asheville, NC last fall.  Jan 30, a small study of the after effects of "Juno", the Nor'easter that dropped 24 inches of snow in Maine. Everyday in between some time was spent painting. I have 28 finished paintings (or drawings)- two were scraped off the canvas at the end of the day as they were unrecoverable. Most of the work was small and directly painted as a study of color or design or technique. A few surprised me by becoming a complete piece just as they are. You never know!

  So what can be gained in this process?

  I had a couple of objectives in taking on this project: moving quickly out of a rather unproductive period around the end of last year, and removing the insidious urge to judge my paintings as I work on them.

  After committing to painting everyday for 30 days, I did gather steam as I went along and began to easily get to the studio and worked with increasing productivity as the month passed. Objective one achieved by the goal setting. Removing the judgement took longer, but I went into the challenge planning to do studies and work small and that took the pressure off the results. This is pressure I give myself, and it's unnecessary. There are always paintings that don't work. There are some that do. Those judgments are not a part of the process of making the paintings.

  There were a couple of surprises during the month, too. I started to paint still life paintings. Looking for a ready subject and wanting to work from life led me to set up some objects and just paint them. I wanted to just get started and paint each day and that suggested still life as subject matter.  Enjoying the color and design of them, I plan to explore the ideas possible in still life.

Working small, real small, makes it easy to work in a series. I have a series of paintings of the Blue Ridge Parkway begun and many more to do. I found a few promising ideas for larger works this way.

The daily painting movement has been around for while now, and there are those who are devoted to it as a practice. Duane Keiser is one of the originators of the idea of a painting a day, and he writes that he sees it as a journal of each day, a way of marking time and growth in his life. Artist Carol Marine finds that she works out ideas  quickly by daily painting, giving her a chance to explore lots of options. She started a web gallery, Daily Paintworks, to exhibit and sell daily paintings for the large number of artists working in this vein.

I found that this approach has many possibilities, and I will bring some of this practice into my own process, but I am ready for some sustained work now. I sure have many studies to work from!

For more on the daily painting idea:

Duane Kaiser.com

Carol Marine

Below is a collage of all the survivors from January 2015!

If you would like to see most of these studies and some writing about each one, you can check out my other blog "Fresh Paint"  here.