The Progress of a Painting: Three years and two paint-overs

John Pohl

I try to photograph the paintings I have worked on during a session in the studio so that I can document their evolution. If I see something in an earlier version I like, I will put some of it back in the next session.

My photographs are organized by year, and if a painting is made over several years, it can be hard to match a painting with its predecessor, especially if there was a a paint-over in a different year, and I didn’t go back to the previous year to find it.

This one was a challenge. I couldn’t find its earlier versions. But I had a clue: the year of the original version was marked on the back of the canvas. It was 2023.

So I went through the 2023 album, looking for the green and black leaves that came from the colours of a previous version, and I was able to find a match. I had named it Into the Light.

There were two paint-overs, the first in black, the second in yellow.

When I do a paint-over, I make my composition with the colours under the new layer of paint in mind. I draw into the fresh paint with a rubber spatula to produce a new composition. If I don’t like the result, I can repeat the process.

Here are eight stages of this one oil-on-canvas painting, which is 20 x 20 inches in size. It is now officially finished (above), but only if it leaves my possession and I can’t subject it to another paint-over!