MAKING A PAINTING

I am in love with the visual world. For me, the most important part of making a painting is the act of looking. Careful observation leads to sustained moments of clarity. In these moments I can move beyond preconceptions, experiencing all things mundane as magical.

Every painting presents me with the task of balancing it’s many elements. Much like lines in a poem, in order for the whole to succeed, the parts of the painting have to support and play off of each other. I want each image to hold the viewers gaze, let him or her enter and wonder around a bit, making their own personal connections and discoveries along the way.

There is a sympathetic relationship between my painting and photography, observation nurtures the imagination, the beauty in every detail of the real world informs my pictorial ideas. I combine characters and places from the photos I take to populate the paintings, creating a world of elusive solidity. The different elements are combined together to form a reference sketch. The painting starts out resembling the sketch initially, as it progresses the painting develops it’s own needs. Often figures and places are shifted or replaced entirely, changed to achieve balance, enhance the narrative, create interesting color juxtapositions, etc. The finished painting usually winds up being very different from the original idea.

In my most recent work the implied narratives have floated much closer to the surface. These images attempt to balance the visual and emotional complexities found at the borders of observational realism, fading memories and lost dreams. I am very interested in further pursuing these ideas, while creating enigmatic paintings with real presence.

My intention is to tell the plain truth, beautifully.
Archil Pichkhadze
Aug 11, 2018