DESTROY and create

Recently in two of my groups we worked on watercolors for a few weeks. A lot of the clients are used to working on an art piece for one group and never returning to it so trying to get people to continue working on one project week to week is taking some adjusting. Most people "finished" their painting in the first session and didn't want to return to it in the second session. My suggestion was cutting up the original painting, gluing it to a new sheet of paper, and then working from there.

One client did actually cut his painting up and we talked about what it was like to destroy our artwork. He said it made him sad to do it. It's interesting because he did it without question, and I didn't even demand it! I said, why don't you cut it up and turn it into something else? or you can start something new with watercolors? But he really developed his painting a lot more after cutting it up. It was also a little surprising to me because I had the impression that he hadn't invested much effort into his original painting (a large splatter-painting). However, he said he liked what came out of this process and he seemed really focused while he was working on it.

I don't have a picture of my original painting (which I realized after I cut it up), but here is where I am right now:


It's interesting the kinds of things that happened when I did this with mine. I first only glued one strip of the original painting down. Then, after starting this new painting, I glued two more pieces down to kind of line up with the new marks I'd made. I wanted to blend these new strips into the painting a little, but not too much.


I just glued the new pieces down using elmer's glue, which means they aren't totally sealed to the paper. I'm also pretty impatient so I started painting while the glue was still wet. I like how it looks like the paint is flowing underneath some of the new pieces.


I'm finding this piece much more interesting to work with now that I'm adding bits of my own work back into it (postmortem?). It's not finished yet so I'll continue to work on it during the open art studio groups I have at the end of the day. I think it's good for me to continue projects in that group that I've started in previous groups because it models the type of attitude towards art making I'm trying to encourage in others: our art is important; we should care about it and actually invest time in making it.



Plus, with all the holidays this month I haven't really had an opportunity to make art at home, so I've been looking forward to this time in the open art studio. :)