Pitcher study

This is a study for a future painting I plan to work on in oil. It was done with acrylic on rives BFK. One of the things i've been wanting to work on with my oil paintings is to loosen up and let the paint itself express a representation of things without being too exact and photorealistic. This is a hard stuff for me. I came from a school that at the time really pushed it's students to try to accurately represent what their eyes were seeing. In a lot of ways this helped me to observe. In other ways I feel like I got bogged down in a sort of "hyper-observation," where I felt the need to record exactly what I was observing. After a while one's eyes begin to hurt with this approach, so a change was in order.

One of my favorite painters is Alex Kanevsky. The way he uses paint to make suggestions of what he sees amazes me. His paintings our by no means simple. They contain a multitude of brushstrokes and colors that complement and sometimes compete with eachother. Often you can see hints of figures or objects that seem to have been erased to make way for another figure or object. His finished paintings become more than just the end result, but a display of the process that goes into a painting.

That's what I've been liking about my more recent paintings; they're becoming more of a representation of a process as oppossed to a desired effect. They're feeling looser, and they are becoming a lot more fun to work on. When I have the money to get some good slides, I'll post them for you all.

That being said, I have to say the Bechtle show at SFMoma was damn fine. I still have an appreciation for painters who can paint photorealistically, and he is one of the best.

So at any rate, feel free to give any comments on the study.