fish-lady paintings, continued.

"And you're a good mummy" - 36"x48"

Current work in painting right now. I am completely loving it. Today in the studio, there were so many good vibes going around. I felt like everyone had a great painting day. This is a work that I just barely started on Tuesday night, so in just two days I feel like I have made a lot of progress. 

This fish image has been away for me to immerse myself in representational while still thinking abstract. Since I keep painting decapitated, cannibalistic, mummified fish-hybrids, my fiance keeps asking me, "Why do you hate fish??" kidding of course. I don't hate fish (I have three pet fish, actually!), it has just been an image that I have latched onto. It has opened a lot of doors for me in my paintings. I really like that I am creating an environment in this painting. I am trying to get away from using too many lassnigy colors, and so far I think it's a success (her influence still present of course). I need to work on the fish head some more, and maybe the environment. Before I mummified the fish, I felt like something needed to go on in the space around it. Now I don't feel that way so much. Conceptually I am confused/excited about the marionette/puppet theme. It kind of came out of no where, but at the same time, it's always been in me. I have been meddling in all things "controlling" for sometime. Now I am physically controlling an object in my painting. It raises questions as to who is doing the controlling,  and who or what the hybrid fish represents. Also I am wondering what good it is to play puppet show with a mummified character (hence it is not movable). These are all things I have been thinking about during this process. One more thing...I really like that the hybrid is set to look like it's dangling in front of the picture plane, and not technically inside it. Matt brought that up and I think I would like to experiment with that idea some more in later paintings. He also made a good comment today about the content of my picture. I was really fighting the "body" of the hybrid and I was saying to him, "Oh I keep having things pop in my head, like mummifying this fish..." and he says something to the affect of, "What would lassnig do? She would just make up an appendage, don't think about what should be but rather what it is." He is right, she would just do it, and that's how she gets those 'strange' images. I see paintings all the time from different artists and wonder, where do they come up with this stuff?? That's exactly how. They are just doing it, the image comes to their head and they put it down. 

This is a painting I started maybe a week or two ago. I haven't touched it since the day I started it and I'm not quite sure where I will take it, but it's an ok start. 

I went to the library the other day and got some really awesome books to read. One on Francis Bacon, R.B. Kitaj, and also a newer collection of painting abstraction. I am excited to read through them and gather some more ideas.