A series of small boards.
When I decided to work in a series, or rather to work on several panels at the same time, I didn’t realise how hard it would be at first to keep myself at it. I allowed myself five minutes on each panel in the first ‘mucking about’ layer, and ten minutes each after that. I set a timer on my phone and kept them moving. Without that I would tend to get stuck on one and forget to change over. I had never worked like this before and I suppose it just felt more natural to get absorbed in one problem at a time. However, I have noticed that when things have not been going well and I look back on it at the end of the day, covered in paint and having used every damn brush in the house, it is usually because I have ended up concentrating on one board, trying to fix that and digging myself a bigger hole. It is also thought to be a good idea to have a board that doesn’t matter, that you can just chuck paint at with even more abandon than usual. It helps you to loosen up and get started. The trouble is that mine keeps going missing. I either don’t care about it enough and it gets abandoned and falls off the table, or I like it too much and it turns into a painting. When you are really in the swing of it, moving between boards is liberating. It has definitely allowed me to make more art, more quickly, which has created some much needed momentum. I have learned a lot in a short space of time. I can line them up and see where I have got to and decide what to do next. When I like something, even though I’m not calling any of these experiments paintings yet, I keep it around so I can remember what was important to me about it.
The best thing working in a series has given me, is that I have got into the solid habit of coming into my studio space every day. It has taken down some of the barriers to doing that, if I’m stuck I just work on something else. In a way I feel less emotionally involved in each one. I do not mean that I don’t care, but I’ve developed a degree of what my meditation favourite Jeff Warren calls ‘inner smoothness’ when I’m painting. Not only is this new feeling very beautiful, in terms of actually getting the work done it is very useful indeed.