Twelve by twelve paintings on board

For the past few months I've been painting on small boards sized 12x12 inches and have found some new ways of working. I've been making exploratory marks and then covering some of them up and going back in to reveal others later after it has dried. I've liked painting on board rather than paper and canvas because I can sand back through to reveal earlier marks.

Some of these aren't finished yet or are overworked so I'm posting them to look at them on the blog. I find that looking at a photograph of the painting set within in text like this can open my eyes to a new way of seeing it. This can lead to further changes down the road.

Although sometimes paintings can be overworked and can't be brought back to the original freshness. In that case I set them aside or else gesso over them to start again.

The three above paintings are among the most recent ones and I'm quite pleased with them now--although that could change, and probably will.

Here are some of the others posted in the order in which they were done.

These seem quite stiff to me now.

Here I was playing with dots and colour fields....

Some of the more recent ones have pieces of older paintings on paper collaged on and include marks made with oil pastel...

This week I decided to take a good long break from the abstract acrylic work. I've packed all the materials away and am going to pull out my watercolours and work with them for the summer. I've realized that doing abstract work is quite stressful for me--because with each addition or subtraction the composition changes and so I'm constantly judging and assessing as I paint. The most successful paintings are those where I am able to get into almost an altered state where the painting comes from intuition rather than judgment.

With the watercolours I'm planning to paint more realistically using my photos as a starting point. This will be a more relaxing way to paint for the next little while.