Progenitors II

At one point during my transition from exclusively making non-figurative paintings into exclusively making drawings of human figures, I tried to make a figure using the technique I was employing for my abstract work at that time (illustrated here with a painting titled "Bier Guarding"). What I would do was put down small blobs of paint around a surface and then squash it all with a piece of plexi-glass so that the blobs spread out over the surface and joined without leaving any brush strokes. Then I'd repeat that a couple more times. The idea was for the paint application to be and to look more "natural".

Anyway the figure turned out pretty bad, because the technique doesn't allow much control unless you're extremely precise about the size, shape, and position of your blobs. Which sort of takes the fun out of it. But so even though the features were hard to distinguish, I really liked some of the shapes that came about, particularly the overall silhouette.

This drawing, then, is an interpolation of a painting that was vague and distorted because I was using an inappropriate technique to create a human figure. Squashed paint has been reinterpreted and articulated as spongy deformations. I think the deformations and mutations, in combination with the festive colors, have a poignant effect.