I was interviewed today by a young girl from my community. As part of her Art Badge, she needed to visit an artist’s studio and inquire about their process and materials. She and her mother asked great, insightful questions, and I enjoyed answering them. It gave me a chance to think about who I am as an artist and to reflect on the why and how of what I do.
As I finished a piece today that I have been working on – in my mind for a couple of years – but physically for a couple of days, I realized that more people might like a glimpse into the workings of an artist’s process. I am sure that we are all different, and I am constantly evolving my own creative system, but here is the journey of my latest painting, “The Roost”.
I often begin thinking about a painting when I see something that captures my attention. About five years ago, Jerry and I went on a missions trip to Costa Rica. We travelled along rough dirt roads from one remote village to another, and I was fully enamored with the small rustic homes and rural jungle life. On one of the trips to La Gata, we passed a tiny house with a fence across the front yard. A rooster was perched on the fence, and though I only caught a quick glimpse, that image burned in my mind. I knew instantly that I wanted to paint something similar.
Several years later, while visiting a local friend, I took these pictures of her chickens roosting on her deck rail. It was dusk and image quality was not good, but it reminded me of that rooster in Costa Rica. I realized then that the image I was interested in capturing was really about the roost and not the particular breed of chicken. I found a board that seemed just the right size for the painting and covered it in black paint. Though unsure of the background color I wanted, I decided black would be a good place to start. I left the board black and it sat unpainted for a couple of years longer.
Finally, this week, I decided to paint these chickens. Usually, I paint a background and then chalk in my subject before adding the details, but I have striving to loosen up and allow myself to experiment and develop the image as I paint. This time I used the brush to “draw” my simple outlines. As I began adding splashes of color to the background, I could see leaves developing. I started thinking about the bush outside my kitchen window where we often find our chickens roosting at night. Just last week, I peered in between the branches and found myself eyeball to eyeball with a hen! She was not happy with me for invading her privacy!
Finally, I worked between these two photos, as well as some generic chicken photos from the Internet for reference, to create the final painting. In the end, I realized that I was not trying to replicate three specific chickens but instead a conglomeration of memories and experiences. I love the attitude and atmosphere these chickens create – it is exactly what I think of when I imagine “The Roost”.
