Painting is like Gardening

A gardener chooses where to plant, prepare the soil, select the seeds, and imagine what the garden might become. But the plants grow beyond their control. Things happens according to their own nature. Weather conditions or unexpected invasion of other plants may affect the garden.

Painting feels much the same.

Not knowing how it will end, I begin with an image, a memory, a colour, or just a feeling.  After a few marks or shapes put on the surface, the painting starts to develop its own way.

One colour leads to another. A shape that was important may be removed.  A spontaneous mark may seem interesting enough to stay.  A mistake may open a new direction.

I wouldn’t say I am making a painting.  Rather, I am responding to it.  It is just like a gardener responding to their garden where some flowers flourish while others struggle.  You intervened when necessary but you know when to leave things alone.

It is a balance between control and surrender.

If a garden were controlled too much, it mights lose something essential about being natural.  Part of its beauty comes from variation, irregularity, and surprise.  Painting is just like that.  While having a structure to hold the painting together, I also want room for accident to surprise me.

I make many decisions in the process of painting but the materials also participate.  I might notice paint drips, unexpected colour mix, a texture I didn’t anticipate, and so on.

In this sense, painting is not the execution of an idea. It is a process of cultivation.

I paint something, respond to what emerges, remove what is unnecessary, nourish what feels right, and wait.

Sometimes a painting grows quickly.  Sometimes it remains unresolved for weeks or more. Or a painting I thought I ruined begins to reveal something again later.

Gardening teaches us growth cannot be hurried.  Painting is like that.  It develops through an ongoing relationships between my intentions, chance, materials, and time.