Drawing is Like Knitting: Making the Painting, “Wearing Busia’s Shawl”
Drawing is the basis of nearly everything when it comes to my art practice - including painting.
“Wearing Busia’s Shawl,” acrylic and graphite on 1.5” cradled basswood panel, 24x18 inches, 2022. (Busia means grandmother in Polish).
The painting Wearing Busia’s Shawl is about healing and remembrance through the process of art-making. The art I have created over the past year is about love, loss, and mourning, but also about finding beauty, healing, and remembrance in the midst of sadness generated by loss. Loss, and its unexpected beauty, are themes in my work regardless, though the past year has especially fueled them within my work, and within this painting, specifically.
Wearing Busia’s Shawl is a self-portrait where I am wearing my great-grandmother’s shawl, which she knitted years ago. The shawl was a gift from my aunt that she gave to me in memory of my grandfather who passed away this past fall, and when I traveled back to my hometown of South Bend, Indiana for his funeral. I was born and raised in South Bend, a city in a small corner of the United States where grandparents still speak Polish and meals of Polish noodles and pierogi stick to your ribs for days. My grandfather spoke Polish, and so my father, aunts, and uncles were taught by my grandfather to refer to my great-grandmother as “Busia,” or “grandmother,” in Polish. In the chaotic days of burying a loved one, in this case, my grandfather, who was in many ways the glue of our family, I found myself entrusted with Busia’s shawl.
The loss of my grandfather was my second of three great losses that occurred in the last months of 2021 and early 2022, and there was little I could do to keep the loss I had suffered out of my artwork. The under-drawing of the painting Wearing Busia’s Shawl was integral to its creation and took me days to finish before I could lay on the paint. This is because I meticulously drew out each knitted loop of the shawl – as if I were “knitting” the shawl myself, in my own way, and that way was with my pencil. In this way, drawing became like knitting. Through the process of knitting the shawl over the image of myself with my pencil, I found that I experienced cathartic healing and fond remembrance of my grandfather. I also found this process to be a method I used in order to keep getting up and working each day, even though the feelings of grief and pain, which I held from my loss, made me want to lie in bed instead.
In the process videos below, you can see the “knitting” taking place. The podcast you hear playing in the background is the The Jealous Curator Podcast, Art For Your Ear, and it has been a large component of keeping me “going at it” each day. The podcast features interviews with working artists, including what they were like as kids (an “artsy” kid or not?), where they went to school (or not), and how they came to make the type of work that they do. If you are a creative person starting your own venture (or any person for that matter) and you don’t want to feel so alone in “figuring it all out,” I highly recommend this podcast.
In the first video, you can hear the voice of artist Andy J. Pizza talking with The Jealous Curator (Danielle Krysa) in the podcast episode breadcrumbs and allies. In the second video, you hear the voice of artist Beverly Fishman in never let the world define you.
Before creating Wearing Busia’s Shawl, I had not paid much attention to the details of fabric or textiles within the drawings and paintings that I created. My attention was usually on the face, not the garments or the clothes, and this is because the facial expression is what held the message within artworks for me. Oftentimes, I would represent clothing with simply a flat color or some soft rendering, without much thought to its patterns or meaning. Though not a particularly novel thought, I know now that this is certainly not the case. Because of Busia’s shawl, I now want to pay closer attention to the rendering of clothing and textiles within my work going forward, as clothing tells such a great story of who we are and where we come from in terms of our lives, culture, and identity - garments also show individual style preferences; status; thriftiness; creativity; fashion (high fashion and street style); personal values; personal influences; where we came from; and how we grew up. Clothing and fabric illustrate all of these things and more. In fact, I seek to use more patterns from textiles within my work going forward. I feel that Wearing Busia’s Shawl is a successful preliminary exploration of both the facial expression and the garment of the adorned.
Many artists have used the influence of patterned textiles in their work over the years. For example, the contemporary artist Bisa Butler uses Dutch Wax Cotton with original 1920s designs, originally marketed to Africa. The textile choice is intentional, as she works with fabric that has distinct cultural ties.
Drawing is the basis of nearly everything when it comes to my art practice - including painting. I often start each painting with a very concise under-drawing, which, once completed, is the template for the painting. I hesitate to call it a glorified coloring page - because it oversimplifies the process - but in effect, that is what I create for myself.
Under-drawing of Wearing Busia’s Shawl in progress.
Since there is so much work that goes into creating an under-drawing for a painting, and in particular the meticulous detail that went into “knitting” the shawl in Wearing Busia’s Shawl, I will almost always “preserve” an underdrawing by sealing it with a layer of clear gesso before painting.
Gesso is a primer for a canvas or panel on which you are going to paint. Using gesso on a canvas is similar to using primer on the walls of your home before adding the final top coat of colored latex paint. Gesso is the first layer on canvas that gives colored acrylic paint something to stick to - it is the whitewash that makes canvases - like the ones you see for sale at Michael’s and other craft stores - well, white.
Gesso can also be colored or tinted, or even clear. So, in my paintings, when I am creating an under-drawing, I use a layer of white gesso on my panel, first (I use sanded wood panels instead of canvas - I like panels better than canvas because they are smooth and feel more like drawing on paper); then, I draw my under-drawing on the white, gessoed panel; and finally, I seal the underdrawing with clear gesso. The clear gesso acts as a protective coating over the pencil so it does not smudge later when I am painting over the pencil lines.
My favorite brand of clear gesso is Liquitex Professional.
The tool I use to seal a drawing is a Catalyst W-06 silicone wedge made by Princeton Artist Brush Company. I like the wedge tool because it allows me to maintain a smooth surface when sealing the drawing and does not produce as much unwanted additional texture, lines, or smearing as using a brush.
My favorite tool for sealing a drawing is a Catalyst W-06 silicone wedge.
Once a drawing is sealed and the clear gesso has dried, that it when I begin to “color in” the drawing with paint. The painting takes on a myriad of looks throughout the process of adding paint because my technique is to make many light washes of paint layered over one another.
Both the actions of painting and drawing are important to me in processing feelings and generating an artistic voice, though drawing is strongly the basis of my paintings, and the viewer can see the graphite markings showing through on a finished work, which is intentional. The dark, gestural graphite lines underneath the paint lend an expressive look which helps to convey emotion. Though the inspiration for my artwork is based in loss, it is not about death, it’s about life; the unexpected beauty found within loss; and the perseverance to continue while discovering the beauty left behind.
The painting Wearing Busia’s Shawl has been submitted to the Salina Art Center in Salina, Kansas for their juried biennial, Contemporary Art from the Mountain Plains Region. If selected, it will be on display in Salina, Kansas from May 25-September 4, 2022.
Next week, I will take the painting to be professionally photographed at a local photography and framing studio that specializes in quality photography and framing of artists’ work. With each exhibition opportunity, there is also an opportunity for sale. Commissioning a photograph will give me a quality image that I can archive in my artwork inventory database (more about that in the next newsletter’s business post), and I will also have a high resolution image that I can use to make prints and postcards. I am excited to share that this painting will be one of the postcards made available in the end-of-year post card set for those who are subscribed to the Supporter membership level. I would also like to eventually offer print editions of artworks going forward.
