Curiosity drove me, in 1997, to record the number of hours I spend on each image I paint.
I began to keep the little cards on which I record the numbers thinking they were an interesting artifact of my process.
It helps to know how long it takes to complete the average painting when planning for upcoming shows. It’s also enabled me to passive aggressively imply to galleries that my paintings are being given away, considering how long it takes to paint them.
I can also torture myself with the fact that the paintings are now taking four times longer to complete than they once did.
In a continuing effort to expose my painting methods I began sending copies of the ‘time-sheets’ to O.K. Harris with the paintings in 2005 and now affix them to the back of the framed painting. I’m not sure what anyone makes of them.
For the statistically minded, the longest I've spent on a painting was my most recent: ‘Parkside Bar’, 2009, 8 X 12” at an astonishing 682 hours.
The most time consuming image for its size was ‘Munt’, 2007, 8 X 5.5” at 387 hours or 8.8 hours per square inch!
Not that I’m counting.
