2020~Something Polymorphous This Way Comes (Art in the Time of COVID Pandemic)

Step 1 and 2 spontaneous mark-making with watercolor crayon (black and ochre) layered with matte medium to stabilize.

2020~Something Polymorphous This Way Comes 

24"x18" watercolor crayon, matte medium, acrylic on canvas

My intention when I began this painting was to make marks with the watercolor crayon and to honor them when I added paint. I challenged myself to be as spontaneous as possible (mostly because I've been missing spontaneity in my life during these lock down days). I promised this painting that I would work quickly and in whatever way it told me to work. 

My initial marks were the tower on the left that began as asemic writing. Tower completed, I moved the crayon across the top and down the right side. When I went in with a paintbrush to add the matte medium to stabilize the watercolor crayon marks, the black and ochre smeared and came onto the brush, into the medium, and became part of the new marks as I moved down the tower of writing. I knew it would smear, so I took enough time with this part of the process to notice how that happened and what could come of it--how the original marks changed, were enhanced or slightly disappeared.

Then came the adding of the colors. Admittedly, I'm really into blue and orange these days, so they dominate. I was also wanting to mix the blue and orange on the canvas to reach an appreciative brown. I'm satisfied with that. I have purchased some cadmium free yellows and red (Utrecht from Blick) to play with and used these freely in the creation of the shades of orange. I applied the acrylic paint using my fake chamois. It's almost as if the paint could dissolve away with the change of the wind or water. I rather appreciate the effect this had on the canvas and in the composition.

In the end, this painting made me laugh. And then I struggled with the title. I could see a reference to the local marina where I had been a couple of days before beginning the painting, the mountains in the distance, the dock, the wabi sabi of the abandoned vessels, the water, the beautiful colors and shapes of the oil slicks on the water (in spite of their environmentally ickiness). 

But I wondered at what that creature/thing was at the top center of the painting, that thing that's leaning in and placing/removing one of the bits. I wondered at what was moving in toward the tower...was it a good thing...was it a bad thing...was it just a thing...another variable to be dealt with? Then I thought of a line from Shakespeare's "Macbeth": "By the pricking of my thumbs/Something wicked this way comes." And I started to laugh--as much as finishing my painting made me laugh. "This is like 2020," I thought. Then I became somber about it all: We did not see this coming at this point in time, along with everything else that we've got going on (if you're paying attention, you know what I'm talking about). So I changed Shakespeare's line a bit and exchanged "Polymorphous" for "wicked." It's a horrible, multi-dimensional, shape-shifting thing that has come our way. So much loss of life, of loved ones, of ways of life, ways of being. Resources stretched to limits. Societal contracts broken. 

And that's just the beginning...