I'm Back! With Squares and Rectangles

This is the second to last day of what has been a more than two week period of self-isolation. When I first found out I had been in contact with someone who had tested positive for Covid, I thought that at least I'd have time to make some proper progress on my paintings. Unfortunately, all I did was develop a massive artist's block.

Everything I tried to paint looked rubbish. I had all these ideas in my head that I was excited about, but I couldn't get them onto canvas or paper.

This lasted for a big chunk of my isolation period. And I was beginning to feel concerned that I was going to waste the two weeks, and not get anything done at all.

Then I noticed this really nice shade of green on a building outside my window, and I realised that was the colour that should go on one of my paintings, a small pink one which had been gathering dust for a while.

The moment I added the green, everything started coming back to me. I was excited to paint again, and things started to turn out how I was hoping they might.

Following this, I started looking more at the buildings outside my window. There are a lot of sharp angles and straight lines.

In the sunshine, these squares and rectangles of different colours and sizes, at different angles to each other, make a sort of tapestry of colour.

"Tapestry" seems right. Thats something to bear in mind while I'm making this next set of paintings.

I started using these shapes to get myself moving again on another painting. This was a big painting I have been working on for a while, and which I had been feeling really stuck about for almost as long.

I had begun with quite fluid, organic shapes, but now, incorporating these hard, angular lines, it was starting to take shape.

Its interesting how sometimes what you need to bring a piece together is the complete opposite of what that piece is about.

All these squares and rectangles even gave me an idea for a new series, which will include the above, and also possibly some circles and a triangle.

So that is how squares and rectangles, and the colour green, cured my artist's block.