The Scenes paintings: Decisions 1

The invitation to make something visual to be part of a performance of Schumann's Scenes From Childhood was open-ended. I immediately ruled out performance painting: 1) it is too distracting and 2) I would not have a single emotive artist response on a stage being watched. Actually, I didn't really need reasons because nobody wanted that anyway. All the same, what to do?

What I like to do is paint. Even if there were other elements involved, I decided that I would make paintings. 

Then I had to decide if there would be one big painting, paintings that connected to make a whole (more difficult working with 13) or individual paintings. I batted this around for a bit. I liked the idea of big; lots of space to make marks, maybe even get some kids involved, but I couldn't get that idea to land. Big is hard to handle and hard to move, and the content did not gel. I kept coming back to 13 paintings, not too big or too small, on canvas or board.

Not all the piano pieces are the same length and I debated if the size of painting should reflect that. I made an arbitrary choice that they would all be the same size: dimensions some number of inches in the teens.

Square or rectangle? If rectangle, landscape or portrait? I went with personal preference. I like squares. I settled on 14" x  14" canvases. The dimensions are close to the size of paper we give kids to draw and paint on. And canvas instead of board because it is lighter and there are different framing options, including not framing at all.    

The piano pieces have different themes, tones and spirit and I debated if the paintings should be visually unrelated. I decided that I wanted an over-arching tone -- the mists of childhood -- with related but varying content.  I wanted colourful child-like marks. I have watched enough children paint to kind of know how that goes. 

I  wanted elements of collage involving paper and objects. This helped me commit to using acrylics, not my go-to medium. The drying speed, in this case a bonus, usually makes me crazy.  

The decisions, to recap, are that I would make 13 paintings, on 14" x 14" canvases, using acrylic and collage, with a visual tone in common and varying elements.

I give you stage one. They are in order, 1-13. Colours were inspired by the themes of the piano pieces: