Knowing when to stop. oil on canvas. 30 x 48 inches. Price: $2200
Painting by Patrick John Mills
I just decided to stop working on the painting.
I felt I had managed to capture something. I was wishing to work more on the painting.
Give more, Work more. Stuggle more. But the painting felt correct and had results outside of myself.
It is odd for me to first put white paint down on the canvas. White is opaque. But I started this painting as a result of cleaning my brushes while painting on another large painting. So the painting just developed. One could say that this painting was the left over paint on my brushes and palette knife that just painted itself. I was not thinking. Just painting. I think I am a better painter without using my brain. haha.
Yellow painting. oil on canvas. 28 x 42 inches. Price: $1600
Painting by Patrick John Mills
Sorry for the title... very boring title. My brain is thinking in paint and not words.
This I feel is one of the best paintings I have completed this year. I feel there is something pure.
In that moment... I felt pure connection.
The painting is so wet that the photo had to be taken from an angle otherwise it would reflect too much.
The painting is very textured.
Self Portrait. oil on canvas. 20 x 24 inches. Winter to Fall 2011. Price: $900
here are a couple of brutal self portraits
these were completed in the months before Erika (my wife - 17 years together) moved out
these paintings were hanging on the studio wall. So I took photos of them.
1 comment:
Wonderful. Great work.
Knowing when to stop... the everlasting question! There's always a great tension when you paint. You don't want to lose the good parts but yet, you wish to obtain fresh gains and you therefore inevitably destroy good parts. The work bears the history of this process of decision making. Who knows, maybe great works hide even greater works in their first layers of paint? Sometimes the most courageous thing to do is to stop early. Nothing is more boring than an overworked painting.
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