Orchids

Orchids
(work in progress) 

16 x 20"

acrylic on board

© Nicki Ault, 2014

Let me just get something off my chest... painting abstracts is hard! I mean HARD. Especially working straight out of your head. Not easy. What do you even paint? It literally could be anything! How do you even know what colour to use? You don't! There are no answers, just questions. You start making marks, but then they don't look good so you cover them up and make different marks, but then they don't look good so you cover them up and make different marks, but then they don't look good so you cover them up. You see my troubles. So then you get to the point where you say to yourself, "Okay, this is it, I'm going to put an awesome colour/mark here." But then you think it could wreck everything, so you don't. Then you say to yourself, "On the other hand I will never know unless I try, so here goes...." And then you do it and everything is wrecked, so you put a bunch of gesso over it and start the process again.

Basically the above painting is my most recent experiment. I don't know, I am at a stand-still. It's a quirky little deal and for some odd reason it makes me think of orchids. It makes my son think of a chicken lady wearing an outfit. Whatever. Funny thing is that it has pretty well turned out to be the colour palette of my new renos... turquoise/teal, orange/paprika, black and white. It needs more work- something, anything. Or maybe just another coat of gesso! My indecision is a problem. So I am putting it "out there"- ready or not. There may as well be more of us pondering the difficulty of abstract painting.