So here it is, complete!
Gosh, it doesn't look like all that much to me from here! Huh. It took hours and hours. Isn't that always the way?
Maybe if you get closer.
In reference to the Peter's Projection Map I started with, I'm calling this group of canvasses "Actual Size." I thought I was doing a piece about the actual -- rather than commonly misrepresented -- sizes of countries and continents. I take issues of size rather personally, maybe partly because I've always been a little slip of a thing. Underestimation's a recurrent hurdle for the wee.
I started with an actual map of the world. I ended up, I guess, with a very different sort of map.
A map of emotion?
Of the past?
I painted an unbelievable number of layers. Half the time, I'd end up scraping paint off and giving the whole thing another go. I told Brandon it felt like the canvasses and I were collaborating. As a theater artist, I'm well aware that few collaborations are matches made in heaven; most of them are sustained by resignation.
On each canvass, I'd keep trying until we could agree -- until what the canvas wanted to be matched up with my meager ability. There was a lot of compromising.
I had to let go of almost every single thing I planned to do. (Seriously, when I think about the amount of stuff I ended up painting over . . . !)
Of course, with my fondness for metaphor, I found the whole process quite fraught.
Happily, I learned that I have become more patient in the last few years, thanks to those little munchkins I've been raising. I can handle more readily the idea of leaving something unresolved. With not knowing if something will work. With letting a canvas be freaking ugly for a few days while I take care of other stuff on my list.
So that, I think, represents some growth!
Yeah, there are crazy wrinkles and air bubbles.
And for the life of me, I can't get the canvasses to all hang straight at the same time I think my brain is in crooked.
Still, the thing is done.
And I did it!
