An Exploratory Approach
Learning to trust his instincts has led Daryl Urig to a number of new series, methods and ideas
Pictured here and on the opposite page are two of the works from my series. There are 15 in total, with each being 24 by 48 inches. They were crudely painted to express a lot of feelings of a turbulent time in my life. A time pressed with hard choices. They were painted with a 1-inch sponge brush from a hardware store.
We can certainly learn from others, but know when to jump the ship and find your own path. Too many artists start out learning and never learn to find their own personal interpretation. If you wait too long to begin exploring, you will never want to give up the safety of the easy path.
I am currently using an exploratory approach for developing a painting. You will need to use your creative eye to help you evaluate and make good visual decisions based on training and your developed visual aptitude. At times, the decision process will flow from one decision and paint mark to the next. Other times there may be pauses and even stops while you ramp up for your
next group of painterly choices.
It will be a lot like going on a road trip in your car, where each new observation brings a recognizable or non-recognizable image and possibly feeling or understanding. Or you mind may dismiss all reasoning and go for something more. Once you try it, you will want to return often. You are not trying to be someone else’s idea of what a painting is. It is just your point of view.
In my painting career each painting I start ends up being a series of painting explorations. In high school it was heavy impasto portraits of made up characters. In college it was a series on how people resembled their animals, in many different mediums. Later, 10 large
paintings on my fear of what other careless drivers or myself may do to jeopardize my road safety became the series On the Road. Then, impressed with my new wife, the Woman in the Garden series of paintings emerged in vibrant oil colors, thick brushstrokes and heavier painting knife for contrast.
Next, plein air landscape painting with only a painting knife for years, to learn the discipline the knife teaches us, and further developing my color training with outdoor natural lighting. The question, can I paint outdoors? I leaned to simplify and organize my tools to speed up painting before the sun changed the scene I was painting from. Painting with oil paints and walnut oil