Detailed directions of the creation of a Francisco Moreno painting

1. Interested in identity, culture, and heritage; attempt to paint old family portrait of my father and his siblings from the 70’s.
2. Acknowledgment of failure in attempt to paint family portrait. Frustration with using old photograph as source, search for new subject matter.
3. Find old family heirloom religious cross that mother had covered with silver Mexican charms.
4. Attempt to superimpose still life of charms with family photo.
5. Fail to meet happy-median between family photo and charm still life.
6. Cover up family photo painting with painting of charm still life
7. Acknowledge lack of interest in charm still life, put down source and ponder next step.
8. While pondering, remember Susan Rothenberg talk at the Fort Worth Modern with Michael Auping. There are four requirements to making a painting: 1. Figure, 2. Ground, 3. Tension between 1 & 2, 4. Acknowledge painting as object.
9. Think about Rothenberg’s step 4
10. Draw a four-sided polygon in which the points meet the midpoints of each edge of the 48” x 70” painting.
11. Paint triangular areas outside of the polygon with white oil-based house paint purchase from the Home Depot.
12. Acknowledge a mistake was made and that the painting was interesting before whiting out half of it.
13. Feel frustrated.
14. Stress out and smoke a cigarette.
15. Feel pain in lungs and regret smoking cigarette.
16. Disregard pain and smoke another cigarette.
17. Regain interest in the idea of painting a culturally loaded image.
18. Search for new item to paint at the parents’ home.
19. Stumble across corn husk dolls mother has in the guest bathroom.
20. Think about professor and painter, Sedrick Huckaby, and how he stresses the importance of painting from life.
21. Bring dolls into the studio.
22. Begin painting dolls on top of the four-sided polygon painting.
23. Use obnoxious cheap fluorescent pinks and blue printmaking inks because you are stingy, then realize it is a bad idea.
24. Receive a plethora of comments on the pinks and the blues.
25. Cover obnoxious cheap fluorescent pink and blue marks with oil paint.
26. Worry about oil paint over oil inks being archival then soon forget.
27. Attempt to abstract dolls.
28. Realize that the abstraction leads toward an endless endeavor of relative painting. Since there is no sincere interest in this attempt, begin to render the dolls.
29. Render.
30. Sit and ponder visits to Mexico.
31. Recall grandmothers house getting marked with graffiti.
32. Think about how graffiti is intended to work on the populace to establish, in guerrilla fashion, new, engaged forms of class and state identification.
33. Think about the hip Hispanic graffiti crew in Dallas, Texas.
34. Disregard any association with the hip graffiti crew.
35. Render.
36. Think about superimposing graffiti on top of dolls.
37. Create digital collage in attempt to “deface” dolls.
38. Print collage and take it to the studio.
39. Carefully paint yellow graffiti marks on top of doll with oil paint.
40. Realize that this cautious attempt to “deface” a painting is pathetic.
41. Continue to render dolls and paint over failed faux graffiti marks.
42. Realize that in order to deface something, that thing must have some sort of value. In this project, value of time which is portrayed by rendering.
43. Render.
44. Acknowledge that the layers of the painting give the painting a sense of history.
45. Use thicker paint; render the painting with impasto paint.
46. Render.
47. Render.
48. Render.
49. Sigh.
50. Render.
51. Render.
52. Come to feel that the painting has enough work done to it to be defaced.
53. Take a well-lit picture of the painting with SLR camera.
54. Import picture into computer; digitally deface painting with Photoshop using a Wacom tablet.
55. On Photoshop, play around with red, yellow, green, black, and white to see which color would look best to “graffiti” on the painting.
56. Come to the conclusion that yellow works best on the painting.
57. Print digital sketch and go to hardware store and buy yellow spray paint.
58. Return to studio.
59. Take painting outside to “vandalize.”
60. Cautiously put butcher paper around painting in order to not spray the walls of the school.
61. Analyze digital sketch carefully.
62. Vandalize painting.