EMBRACE THE PRACTICE®
Daily Painting Project

I’ve been making one painting every single day for 5,500+ days.
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After fifteen years of consecutive daily painting, I've no intention of stopping. Having cancer as a young adult, I discovered living is not just surviving. Young and faced with an existential crisis, I questioned, who am I? What does it all mean? Psychologically, existentially, transcendentally - what can a life amount to? I was acutely aware of all the time I’d wasted and the things I put off - like painting. I find that routines are simultaneously freeing and grounding. Through daily practice comes inspiration, growth and confidence because this type of project is about process and not the finished product. In short, my philosophy is that you cannot have the good without the bad. . .scroll down to read more

Daily Painting Project, continued

. . . After six rounds of chemotherapy, one month of radiation, and now, years of monitoring to make sure I’m still cancer free, my perspective has changed. I questioned, who am I? What does it all mean? .

But, like a lot of artists, I had trouble working up momentum. After all I had been through, the idea of starting an artistic project and failing was terrifying. I had a moment of clarity and pared the creative process down to this one idea - show up for the job. I started showing up for my new job in 2009 and without excuse I wake up every day at five and I paint.

During recovery from my illness, I happened upon artists whose work reflected a daily ritual as their central theme. One such artist, John Evans, creates one small collage a day from pieces of trash he finds on his walk to work. After 35 years, his cumulative day-to-day process results in a link to cultural, temporal and natural time. The product of this ritualistic behavior not only results in a personal chronicling of days, but also in a complex web of connectedness to the human condition - giving context to his individual existence compared to the vastness of the overall human experience.

The choice to use painting as my medium was influenced by a surge of online activity known as Daily Painting. For the first time, a connection and community was present through blogging, a convenience not available even just ten years ago. What was most memorable about these blogs was tracking another artist’s progression and ultimately improvement. By going back a year or two in their entries, I could see their individual style and personal voice unfold, day-by-day. Continuous painting is by far the most effective way to improve creativity and image making skills.

The benefit of creating one small painting a day stems from the act of routine as practice. Painting every day is not a new idea. I quickly found a lineage of painters I had already admired, like Charles Hawthorne and Edwin Dickinson who created ‘premier coup’ or ‘at first crack’ paintings - small observational works created in one sitting.[2]

When I paint my pieces, I too, work primarily from direct observation. My technique is to make a mark and leave it - no fussing. I restrict myself to a limited color palette, six primaries consisting of three cools, three warms, plus pink and white. I use only two brushes and paint on the same type of surface each day - unprimed, masonite. Each painting takes between one to three hours to complete. At the end of the day, I scan the painting, number and title it. Each title reflects something that happened during the day, like a journal entry. Finally, I post the piece to a blog and disperse it through social media to over 2000 followers, worldwide. For those who follow my blog, the paintings chronicle events in my life yet the subject matter itself staves off the worry.

I find that routines are simultaneously freeing and grounding. Through daily practice comes inspiration, growth and confidence because this type of project is about process and not the finished product. In short, my philosophy is that you cannot have the good without the bad. This daily practice allows a natural progression of skill and self analysis while removing the anxiety of a final piece. The cumulative process is the end product. If painting number eleven doesn’t work out as expected, there is always number twelve (or number 1901).

For myself and other artists, the act of creating in a meditative daily (or almost daily) gesture reflects an intense focus and patience and lends itself to heightened perception. ;

[2] Grace Glueck, “Haunting Moods of Edwin Dickinson,” The New York Times, Noevember 11, 1983, accessed August 1, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/11/arts/art-haunting-moods-of-edwin-dickinson.html.

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Email me for a consultation via phone or virtual meeting. lisadariakennedy@gmail.com