The End of Silence (sold)

End to Silence started to take form during a session with my spiritual advisor, Carolyn Griffith. We started an exploration with a prompt I remember as “what most wants to come through you,” or maybe it was “what do you most want to paint?” I saw it. It was big, bigger than any painting I had made before.

Almost immediately, my thinking brain began producing reasons why I could not make such a large painting. The size of threshold doors, the cost of materials, the audacity of making work of that scale. Little did I know that I already had everything I needed. Gifts of inspiration past were waiting for me a few weeks later.

What I discovered was that I already had the panels I needed. I had one blank panel and two crappy paintings on the same size panel from 2009. I’d been storing them for a decade, and I finally learned why. I brought them all to the studio, primed over them with white paint, and screwed them together with long drywall screws. I hefted it up onto the wall, and boom - panel-math problem solved.

The next gift came in the paint. I had a few old cans of Rustoleum enamel paint from my old days of painting in an abstract style. I love using the Rustoleum black paint to outline figures because it has a thick body and an almost metallic sheen. I had half a can of that, some blue, and some off-white.

Later, while painting, I desperately needed some kind of warm color. I found some orange tractor paint I had bought to paint a steel “I” beam in my studio but never used. It was the perfect gift at the perfect time. Before I set out, I knew I needed black, white, and blue. Needing a warm color was a surprise—a surprise I welcomed.

This painting just flowed out of me. I started with a big blue streak that had been haunting my dreams, and then I just let go. I was on autopilot. I had access to the hundreds of hours I’ve spent over the last seven months learning portrait painting in different mediums like oil, acrylic, watercolor, and digital with Procreate. It was all data accessible to me while I was in flow.

I’ve made abstract figurative paintings before, but never with the baked-in knowledge that I had with me when painting this one. The face just emerged. Starting with eyes is something that I’m always drawn to, and now I know even more about the anatomy of the eye and how to trick our brains into seeing an eye instead of just marks on a board.

It wasn’t long before I knew I needed a warm color. I got that orange tractor paint out of my cabinet and wrested it open. I got so excited seeing the bright orange color that I poured a bunch on the floor. Nothing to do but cover it in rags, for now. That orange made it pop. I mixed a skin tone and then brought in that bright orange profile line I’ve been using in my digital Procreate portraits.

It felt really good for everything to be coming together in one painting.

For your own custom painting, contact me at jason@jasonhanson.com