More painting with gesture, energy, and music...

Abstract painter Lynne Taetsch describes a process similar in many ways to that of Jonas Gerard. That is, she turns music up loud and just paints, using big gestures and moving to the music. It's an energetic process that is evident in the feeling of energy in the paintings themselves.

In the YouTube video "Why Non-Objective Art?", taped at a gallery talk at The Edward Hopper House Art Center in Nyack, New York, Taetsch describes how she works in layers, using methods that will be familiar to you from class. After going through the big gestural phase of the painting, she steps back to see what the painting needs. She turns it around in all four directions, not only upside down.

She talks also about how everything she sees influences her work – not only art she looks at. Colors and symbols are important to her. But what is most important to her is the experience of painting, the process itself – she has no idea, when she's beginning, of where the painting will lead her.

She also talks about how she doesn't think in words when she's painting – she thinks visually. It's the difference between getting out of our linear, logical, right-brained mode of thinking and shifting into visual, holistic, left-brained processing. Different painters have different ways of making that shift – painting to music is a good method.

It's a wonderful, thoughtful conversation about how painters paint and what goes into the process of creating art. You can also see Lynne Taetsch talk about her painting process, especially about working in left-brain mode, and abstract art in the video "Painting Abstract Art." You can find her work online both in the video "Modern Art: Paintings by Lynne Taetsch," and at her website ArtByLT.com.

Dancing with the brush

Still photo from Jonas Gerard – Asheville Painter, by BlindLyleFilms

Ever feel like you need to loosen up in your painting? Wish you could get out of your mind and just paint? Just dance with the brush?

Watch painter Jonas Gerard on YouTube. Seeing his painting process is inspirational – and it makes you want to get up, grab a brush, turn on your favorite music, and paint away.

"You learn to trust – and that everything happens for a reason," he says, in the video Jonas Gerard – Asheville Painter. "Give up results – give up planning — give up worry – and, a big one — a big, big one — give up fear."

He demonstrates on large canvases, dancing to the music, dashing with lines, slapping on paint, carving rhythmic shapes out of the paint, brushing in large areas, all quickly, all spontaneously, all with large house painting brushes, trowels, rags, whatever he has to hand....

"Painting fast gives you – gives the opportunity for the mind to be quiet. ... It shuts off... it goes on, 'All right – let him do his thing.'"

Jonas Gerard Live Painting shows, in time lapse, the creation of two very large paintings, one a museum-sized triptych, followed by a series of still photographs of some of his large paintings. There are also more videos of Gerard painting and being interviewed, which can be found by searching for "Jonas Gerard" at www.YouTube.com.