Mark-making Field Guide

Critique and deconstruction of single gestures
Where do the marks come from? Are they bodily gestures, shapes, lines or marks created by chance? Do I make them intuitively or do they instead belong to a kind of rules based order? How can they be manipulated? How do they relate to one another, to the ground, to the surface? Is it a conscious visual language?

In order to make a kind of objective assessment about the marks I make I’ve begun compiling a field guide to each one as they appear in my paintings. This has been an enjoyable and insightful process and I can feel it influence they way I think while I’m in the process of painting. This is a good thing. I can feel my painting process shift to be more intentional. It makes me think about how these marks come together, where does one mark start and the next begin? I’ve enjoyed the relationship of each mark to the ground – the individual shapes sit centrally upon an active ground. It disturbs my tendency to always create an all-over composition, forcing me to instead create a mark that can hold its own in space.

This guide is not complete, and I’ll enjoy adding to it continuously over time.