In my dissertation I was exploring the roles of control and chance in the process of painting. I always thought that chance was very prominent in my work, in the way I let ink/paint run and mix together, letting the medium take control. And when I add water to the canvas, the water takes control of the paint. Methods like this are evident in my work where I have added ink to wet paper, allowing the ink to bleed out or in my Crown Pools project where I pressed two canvases together with the medium in between, so I couldn’t see what I was doing.
But actually,
if I actually stop and think about it, I have a awful lot of control over the painting.
I have control over,
where I spray/ pour the water
what colours I use and where I put them
(if adding ink) what direction I encourage it to go in by tilting it
Now that I am aware of this, I could experiment with having more control over the canvas, or less, or both and then compare the differences. So how would I do that? If I wanted to lose more control, perhaps I could really emphasize the role of water in the painting, immerse it in water, run it under a tap or put it in the rain, or throw it on from a distance. But the hardest thing to do would be to leave it, and not make any changes.
Or, if I wanted to control it further, this could involve giving the mediums precise directions and patterns to follow and using a paintbrush more often, but then this would create more linear results which won’t be as visually pleasing.
Alternatively, I could just acknowledge the fact that I have a large amount of control over the canvas, and just carry on experimenting. Since my work now is more about creating a sense of depth and mystery, than about the amount of control/chance in the process.
