A Collage

 

Jul11
2019.  Acrylic and collage on wood panel. 12 x 12 in.

Haven’t been posting because I’ve been painting and not feeling like switching to the talking-about-it channel.  I have several new works but haven’t been able to settle down to signing and photographing them. 

This is a collage from 2019, done on a cradled wood panel.  The smoothness and solidity of wood panels are so different from canvas and provoke different moves from me.  The materials here include the green handmade paper, a bit of resume paper, the linear piece of my precious vintage construction paper in a dusty rose, and a disk of matte photo paper painted red.  The red netting is, indeed, plastic produce netting from the supermarket.  It was gratifyingly easy to shape and glue down. 

I enjoy making collages and always feel I’m about to make more, though I rarely actually do.  That may change someday.  I hope so, as they are a distinct channel with results I don’t get any other way.  I think perhaps because I usually base my paintings on line, but the collages are much more about shape. 

Anyway, I like this one. 

Re-routes

Damastes
December 2020.  Acrylic and collage on canvas. 11 x 14 in.

From the three I started around the same time, last October.  I had quite a different idea in mind at first, and played around with some colored pieces with really unsatisfying results.  I ended up cutting them up and here they landed.  This was much more the feeling I was going for originally, but not through the route I was expecting.  The collage is deli paper painted with cadmium yellow medium acrylic, so it has a slight translucency which I liked.

I’m playing around with some similar ideas in the studio right now, and I have to say it’s not working out well.  Lightning never strikes in the same place twice.

Satisfactions

Untitled (1 5 21)
January 2021.  Acrylic on canvas. 11 x 14 in.

I really love this painting.  I finished it maybe five weeks ago, but I began it months before that, in 2020.  It started with just the scaffolding of the black line, as my pieces so often do, and that part went quickly.  But I looked at it for a long time before deciding on my next moves.  It then fell into place just click-click-click, with no fussing.

I actually started three canvases in almost the same way at that same time, and they all resolved quite differently; I’ll post the other two sometime soon.

Anyway, the straight-ahead orange and yellow with the pastel turquoise please me, as does the handling of the small yellow figure at the bottom right and its connection to its uncolored echo in the upper mid left.  Simple elements in balanced yet restless relation.  Altogether abstract and yet mysteriously familiar, pleasurably resonant of something that actually doesn’t exist.  This satisfies me.

Virtual Show

Aquaria No. 6.
2020.  Acrylic and ink on wood panel. 8 x 10 in.

I haven’t been exhibiting work for almost a year, either in-person or on-line.  Covid obviously has interfered with gallery showing.  And I’ve never been a fan of digital exhibition. 

The estimable Twentynine Palms Gallery, however, has now put up their first solely on-line show, for their volunteers, and I do have a piece from the Plague Faces collection in it.  The work is for sale, so do consider checking it out and supporting this historic gallery that has been, like so many, struggling to survive the epidemic. 

Above:  one of the Aquaria series, which have slowed down but not, I think, stopped entirely. This one is unusual in that it is horizontally oriented, and I’ve come to like it especially. 

Axis

Axis
2001.  Pastel on sandpaper, 8 x 7-3/8 in.

Axis is a small work that has remained important to me.  It dates from many years ago, when I was still exploring what pastels could do.  The surface was much affected by the use of spray fixative – a substance that I eventually came to mostly avoid, but whose modifying properties I have also at times found to be intriguing.  The ultimate surface is difficult to accurately reproduce digitally, as is the color, which ranges from green to orange.

I’m not able to work in the studio for a few days or be focused on painting, but this piece has always been a touchstone for me.  I’m always able to reach it, even when I can’t reach much else.