comfortable discomfort

With a couple of weeks of experimentation under my belt, I am feeling increasingly comfortable with and intrigued by acrylic and watercolor paints, and increasingly curious about using them in a "cold wax" style. My first effort, 20"x16", is shown at left. It is not a total success, but neither is it a complete disaster.
I have a lot more to explore about the way that these water-based paints interact with each other and with the various mediums that are available. At the same time, I am using pen, pencil, charcoal, and chalk pastel in ways that I never have done before, and in ways that oil paint does not welcome. This is encouraging me to return to my fascination with mark-making, about which I've written before

I am remembering things I used to know about water-based media, as well as learning new things. Acrylic revolution by Nancy Reyner is a very useful reference for how acrylics work and what the mediums do, all new territory for me. I'm using Multimedia Artboard rather than paper; the artboard is paper impregnated with resin to make it stiff and resilient, and I like its similarity to my usual Gessbord panels.

So a studio session these days is an interesting blend of the new and challenging, and the old and comfortable. Rebecca Crowell recently posted a thoughtful essay on "the comfort zone" (see her blog of June 23d), and its relevance to my current circumstances resonated. I am quite deliberately pushing my discomfort in terms of materials while I am still within the comfort of home and routine, so that when I get to my residency at CAN, away from home, I will have attained some level of comfort with my materials. I hadn't really thought about it in those terms.

Rebecca delves deeper into the topic, asking "what is home in terms of painting?" and suggesting that it is what feels honest and right, and true to oneself. She adds, "Home in any sense is a source of joy and comfort, and there is a place for this in our work." This also resonated: My first approach to experimenting with acrylics and watercolors was to pull out the "beginners" books (for lack of a better term), how-to guides that I purchased twelve years ago when I was just beginning to paint. I obediently began to do the exercises prescribed. It felt all wrong, as though I were trying to do someone else's work. I put the books away, heaved a sigh of relief, and painted from my own center, as it were. The painting above is the result of my first experiment done without "help", using my fledgling knowledge of and comfort/discomfort with the materials in a way that answered my own inner voice.

So I am using the opportunity afforded by the residency this fall to push my comfort zone, and it feels like exactly the right thing to be doing at this stage of my painting career. I am feeling my own way, in my own fashion, keeping to my path but opening myself to new ways of exploring it, not through anyone else's instruction, but on my own.