"Standing on the Edge": the process

I've been working on a painting since about June. As usual, it has been a long and complicated journey. There have been various titles running around in my brain, but the piece has managed to get itself named. Back in the fall I was part of a storytelling event with a writers' group I belong to (Souled Out Artists). They suggested using my then-incomplete collage for the graphic on the program. Since I feel like my collages are really just visual stories, I was happy to do it. And so it's called Standing on the Edge—which was the name of the show, which ironically got its name when one of the writers suggested it from looking at the collage. It's like looking in a mirror at a mirror. So thanks Kevin for the title.

"I never walked near the edge, used to feel for the ledge."

I'll restrict my comments to talking about aesthetics and not about psychology, though I love hearing the stories that people see in the work, so feel free to comment if you like.

I'm sorry that I didn't take a photo of the original piece-of-crap painting I was covering up, but it was of a bridge in a park in Worcester. I made it when was a sophomore in college. I probably didn't photograph it because it still embarrassed me.

You'll have to forgive the conditions in which the photos were taken—I wasn't always painting in the studio, so the lighting varies. Still, you get the idea of the elements that changed. In watching those elements, you can see where the the struggle kept happening—the collage seems almost unchanged but for these two or three spots on it. I wanted to pull my hair out.

These frames show the major changes in the project. They don't include the final piece. I'll put that into another post because I haven't photographed it yet.

Here are a couple of outtakes so you can see more details and a faster progression.