I was a controller in the studio…

For years I controlled every mark I made in my paintings. My hand. My intention. Every decision accounted for. Then I picked up a trowel and everything changed. In this post I share what a trowel does that a brush never can, what I learned from painter Gerhard Richter about chance and why it matters, and how deliberately handing control to a tool changed not just my technique but my entire relationship with making art.

______________________________________

 

I Picked Up a Trowel One Day and Nothing Was the Same After That

For years I was a controller in the studio.

I’d stand at the canvas and fuss. Work a mark over and over until it was exactly right. And exactly right always meant exactly mine. My hand. My intention. Every decision accounted for.

I did get bolder over time. Bigger brushes. Looser marks. That helped.

But it was still Nick making every single mark. And eventually I grew tired of that.

I think the work did too.

Then I picked up a trowel.

 

 

What a Brush Can Never Do

I want to be clear about how I use a trowel because it’s probably not what you’d expect.

I’m not using it to lay paint down. I’m using it to drag paint back across itself once it’s already there.

Here’s what that does that a brush simply cannot.

When I paint a shape deliberately and then pull the trowel across it, something happens that I can’t fully control. The trowel leaves something that isn’t quite me. It’s mine but it’s slightly off from me. The paint flattens. It distorts what I meant. It destroys part of the surface and drags up whatever was buried underneath.

And that gap between what I intended and what actually happened is exactly what I’m after.

 

Chance Is Never Blind

I learned this way of thinking from Gerhard Richter, one of the most important painters of the last century.

He said something I’ve never forgotten. “Chance is never blind. Always planned, but always surprising.”

That sentence changed how I think about making art.

The idea is this. You don’t abandon intention. You don’t throw paint at a canvas and hope something interesting happens. You plan the mark. You make a deliberate decision about the shape, the color, the placement. And then you hand it to a tool that can’t follow your instructions perfectly.

You plan the mark but you let the tool make the accident.

That distinction matters enormously. This isn’t about losing control entirely. It’s about introducing a specific, purposeful gap between what you intended and what actually arrives on the surface. A gap where something unexpected can live.

 

What the Trowel Actually Does to a Painting

Let me describe what happens when I drag a trowel across a painted surface because I think it’s worth understanding in detail.

The trowel flattens the paint. Any texture or brushwork that was there gets compressed, smoothed, partially erased. What was three-dimensional becomes flatter and stranger.

It distorts what I meant. A shape I painted with clear intention gets pulled and smeared slightly in the direction of the drag. The original intention is still visible but it’s been altered by something I couldn’t fully predict.

It destroys part of the surface. Some of what was carefully built up gets scraped back or blurred or lost. This is the part that used to feel frightening and now feels essential. The destruction is part of the making.

It drags up whatever was buried underneath. This is the part I love most. Layers that were painted over, colors that were covered, marks that were made and then hidden, come back to the surface in fragments. The painting reveals its own history in a way I never could have planned.

What I end up with is a picture I didn’t entirely plan. One I couldn’t have made on purpose.

And that’s exactly what I want.

 

Why I Grew Tired of My Own Hand

I want to say something about what was really happening in those years of controlling every mark, because I think it’s worth naming honestly.

When everything in a painting is exactly what I intended, when every mark is perfectly mine and every decision is fully accounted for, the work starts to feel closed. Finished in a way that has nothing to do with being complete. There’s no air in it. No mystery. Nothing that surprises even me.

The work starts to feel like a document of what I already knew rather than a discovery of something I didn’t.

And there’s a particular kind of tiredness that comes from that. Not the good tiredness of hard work. The flat tiredness of doing something that stopped being interesting.

There is something about removing what Richter called the invisible hand, the polished academic hand, that leaves the material raw and present. When the tool makes decisions I didn’t make, when the surface reveals something I didn’t put there, the painting becomes genuinely alive in a way that full control never allows.

I’m never fully in control. And that’s the part that keeps me truly engaged.

 

The Relationship Between Planning and Chance

I want to push back gently on the idea that any of this is random.

When I say I hand control to the trowel, I don’t mean I stop thinking. I mean I change what I’m thinking about.

Instead of thinking about the exact mark I want to make, I start thinking about the conditions for interesting accidents. The right amount of paint on the surface. The right direction and pressure of the drag. The right moment to stop. These are all intentional decisions. They just don’t determine the outcome directly.

It’s a different kind of intention. Less like drawing a map and more like setting a weather pattern and seeing what storm develops.

And what develops is almost always more interesting than what I would have made on purpose.

Make the mark deliberately. Then hand it to chance. See what comes back.

That’s the practice.

 

The Trowel I Finally Found

It took me years to find the right trowel.

The shape of the blade matters enormously. The flexibility matters. The way it sits in the hand and responds to pressure. I went through a lot of tools that were close but not quite right before I found the one I use now.

I sell it through the Art2Life store because after years of searching I genuinely believe it’s the best one available for this kind of work. It’s not the only trowel out there. It’s just the one I’d reach for.

Click here to find the trowel in the Art2Life store.

Now It’s Your Turn

Have you ever tried taking your hand out of the painting? Introducing a tool or a method that creates a gap between your intention and the outcome?

Share it in the comments below. I’d genuinely love to know what tools or techniques have surprised you in your own studio practice.