Grant Wiggins

My objectives for last week have been completed, albeit a couple of days late. With the goal of submitting new pieces to an upcoming juried show, I just completed two “full-scale” renderings of smaller studies.

Today I finished Civvik, and on Friday I put the finishing touches on Circuit. Both are 30 inches square and 4 inches deep. The original studies were 10 inches square and 1.5 inches deep.

The new version of Civvik is actually a reworking of the original. I fixed the curves in the stripes, and the top-most white stripe doesn’t spill over the top edge of the canvas. The white stripes are centered upon the horizontal axis.

Details aside, quite a bit of motoring took place to get these done within 10 days. But now I’m ready to start a series of paintings on paper. I am convinced that this is way to go for the near term. At 60 cents per sheet, I can’t go wrong. Paper is the fastest, easiest way to get ideas out and test them. Assembling stretcher bars and stretching canvas takes too long to get ramped up—something I’m not in the mood for.

So we’ll see how the next few days will shake out. Hopefully I’ll have a lot to upload soon.

Otherwise, I just returned my interlibrary loan copy of Paul Klee’s The Thinking Eye. A compilation of Klee’s notebooks, this brilliant book is one page of sketches after another. Klee explores his philosophy of line and form, and how line becomes form, in an almost mystical way. Definitely a book worth checking out. Amazon has it used for $300. But I think I’ll have to sign it out again instead.

Images of a new set of small, “study” paintings I have made over the past two weeks are now online on my flickr page. Here are two examples of what you’ll see there:

There 1, 2008.
Acrylic on canvas. 10 inches square.

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Angular, 2008.
Acrylic on canvas. 10 inches square.

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Best,
— Grant Wiggins

After going on an early rampage into my new series of paintings inspired by randomness, I hit a creative wall last Friday afternoon. Instead of finishing a maximalist painting (titled Retroactive Psychology)—I was adding a plaid pattern to the top third of it—I felt utterly compelled to paint a minimalist design I conjured up in July 2007, but shelved.

Rather than slog through what I was working on, I abruptly resolved to stop what I was doing and switch things up. So, Saturday morning, I started the painting you see below, which I finished this morning. My thinking was this: If I’m not enjoying making something, it will show.

Above: Cirrex (tentative title), based on a minimalist design I created more than a year ago, proving how ideas and inspiration can resurface later on.

This new minimalist art work is 30 inches square and acrylic on canvas, as is everything I paint. However, I do not yet know what I am going to call it. Names batted around include Cirrex, Corpex, Xorpec, Xorpekt—but nothing really sticks. Cirrex is the leading candidate, though.

The question from here: What to work on next? I feel more inspired to paint another minimalist design from summer ’07 than I do the random series painting. Does it matter?

I’m already behind in the timetable I outlined for my random series, although I know I’ll come back to it. Also, there’s a lot of work to do in my backyard garden—building raised planting beds, etc. Growing things is becoming more interesting to me. There is no reason to stress about things.

Wishing you happiness and the causes of happiness,

—Grant Wiggins