when is underpainting enough?

I've been thinking about painting this morning...interested in the the dynamics of continuing a painting or changing course in a more appropriate way, more universal and inclusive. My interest in feminism and using my own story as the basis of my work seems to have had a muddy history when it comes to painting and mark making on canvas...all my weirdness has tended to come out when I think about painting too much...even when I paint I have tended to get very weird about it. Hopefully this post can help alleviate the shame of the past, create new space for a more positive present and future.

So, my question about underpainting and changing direction:

The muzzle-megaphone cow paintings have run their course for now. My excitement about 6' painting has subsided...altered its form. But yet I still have five canvases somewhat finished, somewhat executed, somewhat intruiged. I sketched many times what had become a very interesting potential, but now I would like to continue to expand on an idea I developed a couple of years ago on the same canvases. My studio is quite small and so is my budget, so a natural inclination is to cover up what I have been working on to pursue an idea I think has more to do with what I'm working with than the cows.

I ask myself, in the process of continuing to be weird: when can I paint over them with what I really interests me? Isn't it all the same thing? When is the spiral of picking up and letting go applicable to painting? I guess: always..one just has to be cautious of not separating media and intention.



The volvelle, the AEIOU (the agressive girl, the easy girl the indulgent girl, the obsessive girl, and the unattractive girl) calls to me and wants to be painted, sketched out larger than 1" x 2". I can see the series, like the overlapping portraits and the 10' pole. It all makes sense writing it out like this...to myself, to you Tereza. More this week