Three Hours Daily

There is no such thing as full time

The letting go was like taking the biggest breath of my life. One of my problems is wanting to fill up the day with art making. There is no one who can create for eight hours. Maybe work, yes, do little touch ups, photograph the work, do admin, research, etc. But create? I don’t think so.

I know that I have a 2 to 4 hour window to create. Usually this would happen at 4PM but life’s schedule doesn’t allow this. So while in this remote region I decided I would do the drawing and creation first. From 10 to 2PM.

Wall sketching

I “discovered” Rubens the Dutch painter in one of the books our friend A. has in her house. I became obsessed. I’d never paid attention to Baroque or Rennaissance paintings before. Usually I went directly to the Impressionists or the Fauvists, which I also love, but the Rubens paintings are so compelling. They are full of action, movement, intensity and of course mastery.

One of the reasons I never liked my work pre-2021 is that my drawings felt extremely stiff. There was an object or a scene just sitting there on the page. I gave too much weight to technique. Portraits were lifeless, flowers boring, scenes too forced.

I made some sketchees from Rubens’ paintings and then simplified and distorted them.

I have some gouache with me so I started to make small colour studies and taking some notes: