Creatures of Pleasure
New work
Around the time I made my move to return to the UK, I began to work more with process that is a type of ‘automatic painting’. I have utilized the well known surrealist technique of decal-comania in the past. This is a set of techniques of making marks with various objects that produce random shapes and patterns to occur. Some marks can be semi directed but most aren’t, how can you predict the way of a splash or paint splat?. One never knows what one is going to get and that’s the beauty of it. I begin by giving up control over the start of my painting, its composition, tone and contents to natural laws of gravity, liquid surface tension. Its a roll of the dice, the swirling of the tea-leaves, the casting down of the chicken bones. Its not an easy method to choose and produces a certain amount of anxiety and fear. But it is a way of confronting the fear that every artist must face, the fear of oneself. The fear that one hasn’t got what it takes to pull that magic out of the heep of chaos one has created on the panel. The idea of the fear of failure has to be overcome, if we are to pull anything good, unique and authentic out of our work is the general maxim, but I am beginning to realize overcoming that fear is not necessary, we are only human after all, the point is that we just keep working, keep painting anyway.
Showing a detail of a larger work in progress. I have started to add some of the top color oil glazes over the red/white egg/tempera/oil under-painting.
So what happens after one has acted upon the panel and created this big paint mess of marks, splats and drips?. Well, then, I sit and look at it and let the spirit move me. And the spirits that has moved me in these new paintings has been the spirits of pleasure and ecstasy. As I worked over the panel with brush and paint, I bought into focus what was already there. My pleasure was as medium and the explorer.
Hi!, I am Stephanie Tihanyi, an artist-painter and illustrator. Welcome to my blog. This is where I write about my work, influences, exhibitions and latest news.
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