The big picture

I like to be organised. I like to know what’s coming up in the diary. I like to have at least a rough idea of how things are going to play out commitment-, travel- and work-wise. I guess I like to see the big picture.

I also like to know what’s happening today. My daily list is the guide leading me through the things that should be done to keep the immediate future ticking along. You could call it small picture stuff, I suppose.

With my recent move into a new style of painting, I am excited by the idea of creating on a large scale. I love the thought of pieces that invite you in with sweeping strokes and intense colours. My new enthusiasm lies, quite literally, in the big picture. But it’s daunting when you don’t know what you’re doing. When there’s little or no reference material, where do you start? How do you proceed? Where is that endpoint that isn’t just a mish-mash of paint with no unifying features? How do you create a meaningful big picture?

So I have left the large canvasses for the moment and pulled out little ones. I have scratched around for meaningless little scraps of paper. In a move that took me FAR too long to come to, I have transferred my gaze to the smaller scale as a way of starting. The big pictures seem too hard. The small pictures are the way in.

There are lots of big pictures that seem too monumental to solve – not just in the studio. There are also lots of little pictures that are easier to tackle on our way. Long live the 20x20cm boards, the cut-up bits of abandoned works, the small differences we can make and those incremental daily steps.

Until later,

Kirsten