Painting Out Loud performances are planned, scripted and choreographed

A lot of people who attend my Painting Out Loud performances think I just get up on stage and paint. Actually, when they tell me that, I take it as a great compliment. But like any performance, everything I do is planned out, scripted and choreographed.

The first order of business when I’m planning an event is to choose a theme. Sometimes the choice is obvious. I did my very first Painting Out Loud performance at Grace United Methodist Church in Cape Coral on Easter Sunday, so I painted a close up of Jesus on the cross. For their Christmas service later that year, I chose Coming of the Magi as my motif.

As I said in yesterday’s post, I painted The Doors for Doors of Opportunity, and I did a rendering of an angel for the Alliance for the Arts’ 2011 Angels of the Arts Awards, which celebrate the contributions that artists, arts organizations and benefactors make toward our quality of life.

Once I know what I am going to paint, I sketch the portrait or scene. After that, I go into my studio, crank up the music, and do a number of studies on progressively larger pieces of cardboard, finishing with a larger work on Masonite.

It’s not enough to perfect the image I intend to paint during the performance. I have to develop a step-by-step process that will enable me to complete the entire painting in 20 minutes or less, which is all the time I typically have during a church service, corporate meeting or charitable event.

Because of the time constraints, I can ill afford to be fumbling for the right brush or the pigment or squirt bottle I need at a given point in the process. To finish on time, every brushstroke and paint drip has to take place in order and on time.

Depending on the motif and venue, this could take as little as four or five days or as much as two weeks. It's an intensive, time-consuming process that has to be undertaken with care and forethought.

 

At the same time I’m refining the image and the steps I’ll follow from start to finish to complete the painting in the time allotted to me, I prepare a script of what I am going to say to the audience while I’m painting and choose the music that will be playing in the background. Here again, there’s no room for distractions or pregnant pauses. Everything has to be tightly choreographed because of the time constraints involved.

I’ve kept most of the paintings I’ve done during my Painting Out Loud performances, and I will be exhibiting many of them together with the preparatory sketches and studies at my retrospective at the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center in January, 2017. That said, there are two exceptions. Remember 9-11 Tenth Year is now part of the permanent collection of Florida Gulf Coast University and on view in the east library at FGCU.

And I’ve actually sold a couple of studies. One of my cardboard studies was purchased by a collector who was taking a tour of my studio one day, and I cut up another into note cards which another collector purchased and pieced back together again and framed.

You can see the studies and the process I employ in my Painting Out Loud performances in Palettes: Past, Present and Pursuits. The show opens inside the grand atrium of the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center on Friday, January 6, with a reception from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. that is part of Art Walk.

The Davis Art Center is located at 2301 First Street in downtown Fort Myers. For more information, check back here and follow me on Facebook.