Angry Management: inside the studio

I painted this late last spring and into summer. It was crafted as a literal attempt at managing some of my own useless and long-forgotten nonsense.

It only dawned on me later that “anger management” was not obviously distinct from what I imagined for my canvas. I saw angry as the thing to be tamed, while anger is a normal and natural response to situations or circumstances.

If I seem to be splitting hairs, I am. But I was seeking to manage my own reactions to anger, and saw angry as a sometimes disordered and unproductive response.

I just wanted to compose an expression showing that variations of this can be held simultaneously, and how each has an energy of its own.

Obviously, what words fail to convey, I thought color and mark-making could.

I first laid down a grid of three fields, framed in a vibrant—since covered—blue. Then adding my representation of three states of the same emotion in response to the same event: a contained, enlightened, and placid spirit; a seething, boiling-over demand for action and attention; and a brooding, less demanding feeling that, if unattended, spills out and threatens to contaminate.

While the initial yellow block exuded a teacher’s pet orderly composure, even it flashes signs of independence. The long-buried blue can’t help but show itself as unexpected green.

The center red is the most volatile section, holding fast but only because it takes so much energy to contain. This diversion allows the simmering orange below it to resist its confinement and partially escape.

I reinforced the grid in a purple and gray, made with a medium of egg yolk, linseed oil, and a touch of water. This relatively fast-drying layer was covered in a similar color but made with walnut oil, applied with a rag to achieve the containment and the seepage I was aiming for. The successful matte finish and the depth achieved took more than a month to dry. Since I painted this on an unstretched canvas, waiting to get this onto stretcher bars was itself an exercise in the management of impatience.

Where some might see a traffic light suggestion, the image I had in my head was how a grade-school teacher might order the classroom: giving too much attention to the biggest troublemakers, leaving her star pupils alone, and ignoring the quiet ones until unaddressed issues cannot avoid fracturing boundaries.

Managing angry isn’t as cut and dried as we’d like it to be.

Here are some process pics proving that there is a blue buried there

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