Lisa Daria Kennedy: Daily Paintings

Lisa Daria Kennedy has been making one small painting every single day for the last nineteen hundred days. After five years, she has no intention of stopping. [...]   "I had a moment of clarity and pared the creative process down to this one idea – show up for the job. I treat creativity like a disembodied spirit and I simply must be present daily to receive it. I started showing up for my new job in 2009 and without excuse I wake up every day at 5:00 AM and I paint.

"When I paint my pieces, I too, work primarily from direct observation. My technique is to make a mark and leave it – no fussing. I restrict myself to a limited color palette, six primaries consisting of three cools, three warms, plus pink and white. I use only two brushes and paint on the same type of surface each day – unprimed Masonite. Each painting takes between one to three hours to complete. At the end of the day, I scan the painting, number and title it. Each title reflects something that happened during the day, like a journal entry. Finally, I post the piece to a blog and disperse it through social media to over two thousand followers, worldwide. For those who follow my blog, the paintings chronicle events in my life yet the subject matter, itself, staves off the worry.

"[...] This daily practice allows a natural progression of skill and self analysis while removing the anxiety of a final piece. The cumulative process is the end product. If painting number eleven doesn’t work out as expected, there is always number twelve (or number 1901). For myself and other artists, the act of creating in a meditative daily (or almost daily) gesture reflects an intense focus and patience and lends itself to heightened perception. Continuous painting is by far the most effective way to improve creativity and image-making skills. The benefit of creating one small painting a day stems from the act of routine as practice. Painting every day is not a new idea. I quickly found a lineage of painters I had already admired, like Charles Hawthorne and Edwin Dickinson who created ‘premier coup’ or ‘at first crack’ paintings – small observational works created in one sitting."

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website