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Thank-you, Sharon, for your most intelligent comments and very relevant examples of free brushwork.
I have been painting a portrait since the child in the garden painting and what you said had occured to me as I was painting it. It is a smaller painting than I usually do so I didn't feel the need to rush through it - i.e one day I did about 1 square inch of satisfactorary work and left it at that. Didn't feel the need to move the painting on in leaps just to feel virtuous. I remained focussed on the essence of the painting - it's point i.e light from a spot light on the face, the shape of the shadows and light, and the expression; and since it was small (18' x 24") I didn't mind so much changing parts (rather that redoing the whole thing) to search for continuity within the piece. I focussed on what it was that I was really, illogically seeing i.e a blue line or a pool of yellow shadow outined in grey (the more abstract qualities of paint which make the painting work as paint but also contain the essence of the subject) where looking rationally there might not be one. For example, in Katie Musolff's third place award self-portrait from the 2006 Artist's Magazine competition, she mentions, in the December issue of the magaizine, a circle on the end of the nose which is her favourite part. That is because it is both stand-alone exciting paint and a genuine reference to visual reality. What I really want to do is make the whole painting a series of those marks.
I think my admittance of fear regarding the defusing the bomb simile is probably where my problem lies. It indicates a lack of trust in my particular mark-making; a fear of the painting not looking like something that has already been done by someone else. And thus rushing through the thing to avoid those fears. (One more painted canvas which I can turn to face the wall so I don't have to confront that fact of its not working) Having comments such as yours, Sharon, that my own thoughts echo really help my confidence. Thank-you very much.
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