There is a curiosity in the verb stuck: the irony of activity not being active.
In my world of painting, stuck can apply to finding a way around: how to get the paint to perform in concert with the idea in my head, translated through my hand. This is a technical issue.
The other way to be stuck is not to be able to find a form, a shorthand, or emblem of visual observation . . . an underlying element in our observations of nature that can ideally convey a sense of universality. I think form is the more difficult to appear, as technique can be learned from studying other artworks. However, the form for every artist is the accumulated knowledge of sight that satisfies the insights of each personality.
Maury Colton, Finding its Target, acrylic on canvas, 32 x 44 in.
Maury Colton, Out of Bounds, acrylic on canvas, 32 x 44 in.
I have only been seriously stuck once in my life. This occurred in the period after I had completed four years of art school. At that time I stopped painting for a period of almost a year . . . for now vague reasons. I primarily thought that I was already “launched” as a young artist. When I started to realize I was not working as I had for the previous four straight years and the desire to do so again returned, it made me realize “I was stuck.” This was a feeling I had never experienced as I had always been the “class artist” starting even in grammar school.
Maury Colton, Shared Quarters, acrylic on canvas, 32 x 44 in.
Maury Colton, A Frame of Understanding, acrylic on canvas, 32 x 44 in.
This new feeling of ineptitude was so traumatic that I vowed if I could get back in the swing of things I would never stop or get stuck again. I have kept the promise to myself to this day. The simple solution? I always have a painting or drawing underway when I leave my studio. In this manner I carry on yesterday’s endeavors and keep a chain of activity in constant action. I know I have something to add, correct, or delete when I open the studio door.
The form, the quintessential vibration of what I want to interpret, is carried in my mind.
Maury Colton, Particular Place, acrylic on canvas, 32 x 44 in.
Maury Colton, One Place to the Next, acrylic on canvas, 32 x 44 in.
The techniques to convey these forms rest with strategies that I have experience with, and the trials to know not necessarily what I know will happen, but more a knowledge of what I do or do not want to see.
Maury Colton, Establishing Forever, acrylic on canvas, 32 x 44 in.
Basically, it is very important to find the correct medium that offers the most sympathetic results to an idea and the sensation that wants to be realized. Some artists need the thick resistance to oil paint, others the fluidity of stain or the finalized impact of ink on paper, others the timed meditation of carving stone or woodblocks, and yet others the weaving of disparate elements.
Maury Colton, Field in Turns, acrylic on canvas, 32 x 44 in.
Maury Colton, Intermediate Space, acrylic on canvas, 32 x 44 in.
Along this line of approach, in looking for a way to get unstuck, never be shy about changing mediums or the size of a painting. These unfamiliar strategies can open channels both manual and mental. These can awaken our eyes to realizations that we are always looking for the unknown, and where better to begin than our unknown selves. We must not forget that the material we forge our work with has a life of its own.
Maury Colton, studio photo (paintings are acrylic on canvas, 32 x 44 in. each).
Maury Colton, One Place to the Next, acrylic on canvas, 32 x 44 in.