I wanted place to compile all my writing about "Vice Grip", so here it is! This is an edited version of several social media posts and some other thoughts and images.
"Vice Grip" is also an award winning painting, placing 6th in the 'Outside the Box' category of the 2023 Members Only Competition by the Portrait Socity of America. You can view it and the other winners on the Portrait Society website. It is such an honor to place as a winner among the 1,200 + submissions!
From Oct 31st, 2023:
This is the first time I’ve carried out a full self portrait since 2019, and one of the first times I really felt called to make a piece, a piece with a lot of personal meaning behind it.
This painting started shortly after I quit my job of five years at the beginning of summer. I was angry. Fuming. Enraged. Angry at so much of what I experienced in that work place, at what that employee did to so many of their employees. Angry that I felt taken advantage of, exploited. Angry that these emotions were taking over my life, had taken over my life, even though I quit. This is a visual representation of what it felt like day to day at that job. Tense, sapped of color, stained, simultaneously boiling and dead behind the eyes. And I realized at so much of my frustration and continuing anger came from feeling like I wasn’t able to accurately express what I was feeling, what it felt like, the physical and mental impact. At the same time, that job gave me so much. Incredible friendships, meaningful victories and progress, a previously unknown passion for the labor movement, friendships, personal growth, so so much more. I wouldn’t be where I am today without that experience. I’m grateful for that.
I’ve never worked on a painting this long, this intensely, with such drive and purpose. Painting this helped me process so much of my anger, allowed me to carry less of it internally, actively step into my new life exploring the complexity of the last five years through the act of painting. I didn’t know I was even capable of painting like this, in this way.
Thank you for reading this whole caption, I really hope you enjoy this painting, it means a lot to me, and I’m also glad it’s done ❤️
From Nov 11th, 2023:
‘Vice Grip’ was a months long process of painting, reworking, specifying, and learning to be more vulnerable in my art.
Since this piece was months in the making, the longest I’ve ever worked on a single piece, I’d like to share some of the process - both in words and pictures.
It started in mid-July when doing my #ArtistsWay morning pages. I was writing angrily about my last employment experience and was filled with an intense need to throw around a lot of red and black paint. I grabbed a half-gessoed panel I started during the lock-down, and then subsequently left out in the elements after sanding a layer for actual months during a depressive episode. It is now definitely far from a perfect surface, and that made it all the more perfect for this portrait. If you see it in person, there’s a huge notch on one side where a piece of the top wood layer chipped away. Streaks were the gesso cracked, and layers of different textures.
Well, there’s definitely more to say about this painting (including how I thought it was done a month in and ended up completely re-working it), but I’ll save that for another post! Hey, I worked on this for months and I want to talk about it!
From November 12th, 2023:
A comparison and pivotal point in the development of ‘Vice Grip’.
The left image is after the first month in, and I felt it was pretty close to done. Looking back I wasn’t 100% satisfied with it, but I was proud of it. Then I went to a workshop taught by @jonathanallerart at the @penartdc in Door County and learned new approaches, learned I was capable of painting in a different way.
I think it’s important for every artist to learn from someone new and different whenever we can, to learn new approaches, new skills, new methods, and then take those back and figure out how and what to integrate. I learned to paint slower, learned that there was a name for what I was doing in my self portrait (grisaille), learned how to achieve movement in values and smooth transitions, and now to really study value shifts and convert those delicately and intentionally.
I legitimately didn’t know I was capable of painting in this way, and I was determined to see this new approach at my self portrait through to its completion. I needed to prove to myself that I had the determination and the patience to carry it out. And I absolutely loved every hour and minute of it. ❤️
From November 15th, 2023:
Let’s talk about HANDS! Holy shit they’re difficult.
I think it’s a safe assumption that if you ask any artist about drawing hands (or feet for that matter), the response will be less than enthusiastic. Hands are weird. Five appendages without a clear focal point, and lots of extraneous detail to get caught up in. When you’re drawing a face, you can tell fairly easily if it looks like your subject (of realism is your goal). With hands, they appear much less individual, a hand is a hand right? I can just stick all the pieces on there and it will look right, right? WRONG. As we’ve all seen now with Ai art, hands are a challenge that humans still do waaaaaaay better.
I spent a lot of time staring at these hands, my hands. The progression tells a story, too. It starts out much more strained, visually conveying the emotion in a much more straight-forward way. As I contributed to develop the piece, to study it, fingers got nudged around, tendons and ligaments softened. The strain is still there, but it’s more subtle. As I step day-by-day further-and-further from that experience, my anger has softened as well.
Moral of the story: hands are hard, so do it anyways!
From November 16th, 2023:
I hope you’re not sick of seeing my face yet! Like how the creation of ‘Vice Grip’ was a form of processing, posting about this painting has been similarly reflective.
If you’ve never done a self portrait, you’d spend a lot of time staring at yourself, and it can be uncomfortable. Staring at perceived imperfections, subtleties you may not have noticed otherwise, and getting very familiar with your own facial features. I used a reference photo for this, I wanted the consistency of a photograph versus a mirror, and it was such a specific pose and emotion I was trying to capture.
It’s felt really good to write so much about this painting and my process, I’m getting a lot out of my system, thanks for coming along.
From November 18th, 2023:
The left hand of vice grip was probably the most difficult part of the pairing for me, on a technical and anatomical level. The tension in the pointer finger was so tough to make convincing. No matter where I moved it, nudged it, it just didn’t feel right, until it did. I’m glad I stuck it out, kept working on it, stayed patient.
So cheers to pushing through and learning about difficult hands configurations 🍻
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