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Gene Gould left comments entitled "Empty canvases" regarding the
process he generally used when starting a new painting, and what happened in the
case of "Painting Angel":
"Staring at a blank canvas is one of the least
enjoyable situations a painter can find himself in. Is there something hidden on
that silent, flat, rebuking surface - living, breathing images waiting to emerge
from nothingness to join us in our world? Michelangelo said that the sculpture
is already fully formed in the stone - that it was simply a matter of removing
the parts that didn't belong to it. And so - what painting exists on this canvas
- that only needs paint strokes to elucidate it? Does one need to search for the
right stone, the correct canvas - the ones with the embedded greatnesses? Or
will any stone or canvas do? Why do such thoughts fill your head when all you
want to do is make a painting on a defenseless bit of stretched cloth? You must
attack the cloth - nothing else will work. You have to put your mark on it -
something to claim it for yourself. I usually smear it with paint thinned with
turpentine. Sometimes I do a nice neat job - sometimes I do a messy job with
ghosts left floating here and there like tormented clouds in a burnt sienna sky.
And then I dream a little, with my thoughts floating like my swirly,
rubbed-on-clouds. I stand aside while images shuffle around on the canvas -
quietly hoping they will end up in interesting places and stay there long enough
for me to put paint around them.
But when I began this painting, I painted in two
people who were simply passing by and had to let them go, with due apologies of
course, after discovering my mistake. Then someone else appeared, someone very
much involved with something. The next thing I knew, he had a brush in his hand
and I began to wonder what he would do with it. As you can see, he began
painting a model from the foot up. And on his easel appeared a painting of a
person watching him paint the model. Somewhere along the line, he became
attached to big pink wings through which can be seen the farmlands of his
youth."
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