Process Painting vs. Planned Painting: Talking about Hummingbird Sonata

I recently posted my new website in an online forum, and got a question back about my painting 'Hummingbird Sonata to My Grandmother' (above).

"Hi Jennifer, I checked out your website and I really liked your paintings. In particular your “Hummingbird Sonata to My Grandmother” caught my eye. How you came to that composition… I hope you might tell me. But whatever the reason I found it intriguing and very beautiful!" • Annette Bartelt

Below is my response; I thought you might find it interesting:

"Hi Annette, so glad you liked “Hummingbird Sonata to My Grandmother.” This was one of my process paintings, meaning I didn't have any specific intention of what I was going to paint when I started. Sometimes, a third or halfway through, something starts to form, a shape that reminds me of something, or a color combination, and I'm like "Oh! That's what this piece is about." And I move forward from there. In this piece, I started to see what looked like a bird's head, and with the pointy beak I thought it looked like a hummingbird. This reminded me of my Grandmother, who passed away recently, and loved hummingbirds--she had a hummingbird feeder in her backyard. So when I saw one bird-like shape, I started consciously making more and finished up the painting that way.

This style of process painting for me can be very freeing, almost more like art therapy. Yet in the end, I am a professional painter so I always look at the finished piece with a critical eye and see whether I think a piece is good or salable. This one I am very happy with, but when I paint in this process style, I may do 10 pieces and have one I really like. When I paint in a planned style (lots of initial sketches & studies), it feels more mundane sometimes, but in the end I almost always like the finished piece."

When I say mundane, I don't always look at that as a bad thing. Sometimes it takes many hours when I'm planning a piece to bring it to completion, and my work ethic then is really important. I recently read an article called "How Mundane Routines Produce Creative Magic," and it really made me think about my daily routine, both when I'm working from home at marketing, and when I'm in the studio and trying to get my creative juices flowing. I feel like I do have more of a routine now when I go to the studio: driving there, putting away my lunch in the fridge or getting a cup of tea, putting on some music, putting on my apron, and finally opening up the palette and turpenoid and getting down to some painting. I also identified with Haruki Murakami's statement about mesmerism: "The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind." I think mesmerism is a great word to describe how I feel when I'm painting and I'm really "in the zone."