Creative Void Or Avoidance

I started doing some painting today. Doing the skies on three new church paintings. All of them are experiments of sorts. Two being on a Gesso canvas instead of absorbent ground as I usually use. And one was a Gesso canvas that I applied thick and textured layers of absorbent ground too.


Churches are a good subject for me to experiment with as there is not that much experimentation in the subject matter as with my canyon pieces. I am not entirely sure how these three paintings will turn out but I had to jump start my creative juices somehow even if I dressed it up as a lab experiment.

So there I was getting into the different way the liquid watercolors were behaving on these varied surfaces and along comes the real world with an urgent legal issue that must be addressed. But surprisingly I went back to painting after making some calls and faxing some documents. So where I had a void of creativity I now was using creativity to avoid.

The above picture of a non-Catholic church in a little rural town was in my file of "churches to paint". I took it for the spire detail. Just one of those bits and pieces lying around the studio waiting to be picked up and worked into something creative.