Dog Woods

This series evolved out of my work with expired house paint. I had made a number of panels using expired house paint. See a previous post about that process. I had always thought of some of them as a painted background, meaning I would paint something else on top of the image that I was achieving with the house paint. I felt that even though some of them were turning out quite beautiful on their own, that I perhaps needed another pictorial element.

As spring rolled around, the dog woods started to bloom. They are such a large and simple and numerous flower. Their delicate white color stands in contrast to the fresh green of the tree's leaves. I thought that these flowers might make a good pattern to add against the vertical background of my expired paint experiments.

My process was to pick some of the flowering dogwood blossoms and photograph them. After adjusting the contrast in photoshop and sizing them. I printed them with the laser printer.The paint is applied using the cut out paper as a stencil. After the painted shape of the blossom dried I added the delicate lines of the laser print photograph on as a top layer.

 

 

 

Figurative Landscapes

 

 

This series came about because a student assistant had mixed up too much of this flesh toned color. They kept adding more and more paint together in an effort to get a different color. In the end the student abandoned the attempt and left a half gallon of this color setting on the mixing table unused. Me, being the studio manager, not wanting to discard the large amount of paint, set it aside hoping another project might come along where that paint might be useful.

Thinking that the color reminded me of flesh, I wondered if I could use it that way. First I tried to use it as a flesh tone and experimented with painting a figure. However the paint did not mix well with other paints. And I just wasn't finding anything with that approach that ultimately interested me. Working with some photographs I had taken that had been enlarged. I became interested in the abstract forms that the human body and skin can make. While not necessarily identifying any particular area of the body. The resulting images became abstracted landscapes of sorts in my mind. The flesh tone of the paint reinforces the essence and further references the human form.

I used laser print transfer to add a photographic line element. I also set the flesh tone against a dark background. Letting the two colors blend and merge with the print. The effect reminds me of an early wet plate photographic process.

All the paintings are 8.5 x11 inches. On a wood panel. 2024.

 

House Paint Series

 In the previous post I discussed my painting process I use to create these paintings. This post featured the paintings themselves.

House Paint Series process

Every year I go through the paint closet and weed out old cans of paint that can’t be used or salvaged. I use a lot of house paint to paint theater sets so it is necessary to periodically go through the shelves checking the paint cans for expired paint. As the opened cans of paint age, they can dry out, separate, or even develop mold. If the paint is still liquid but unusable the can is filled with sawdust to fully dry it out before being tossed. I began to feel that perhaps I could find a better use for this stuff.  .

The collection of random cans of paint colors 

My palet has been limited by what paint is expired and saved from the trash.

Moldy separated yellow paint. 

Occurring parallel in the theater scene shop we use thin plywood called  luan. Working with his material  also produces a fair amount of waste and off cuts. I brought together these two waste products and repurposed them into artwork.

A number of wet panels drying on the studio floor

My process became trimming the luan plywood into uniform dimensional panels. Then spooning paint across the top edge and using a wide pallet knife like a squeegee pull the paint across the panel. Often I spoon on a couple of colors and let them combine and mix in a random way as they are squeezed across the surface. Each successive scrape of the knife further blends the layer of wet paint together and simultaneously reveals lower layers of dried paint underneath. 

The painting is set aside to dry where after another layer of paint in a complementary color is added in a similar possess. I repeat this process over and over. Adding paint then scraping it way.

The choice of working with the medium of discarded house paint is a direct reference to my Father’s scientific work. He worked for the Food and Drug administration where he invented and patented a quick and easy chemical process to determine the presence of dangerous levels of lead in house paint. His lead detection kits are still widely used because they are so simple and accurate. My process of layering paint alludes to the countless times interior walls are repainted in Brooklyn apartments. Often dangerous lead paint remains on walls hiding under many layers of paint that have been applied in the years since lead house paint was banned.

"Plein Air" flower work

 This summer I’ve been doing "plein air" flower drawings with colored pencils. I found an old spiral bound sketch book that was empty. I challenged myself to fill it up by the end of the summer. Consequently, I work fast, getting down what I see as quick as I can. Sometimes I am holding three or four pencils at a time drawing in different colors. Letting them blend and fill large areas. I have never really worked with colored pencils much before so this has been fun, learning how to use them.

I have been going with a friend about once a week to various parks within walking distance to the studio. My friend has been working in watercolors and I, in colored pencils.

Making these drawings has given me a couple of things to think about. First is the difference in drawing from life vs working from photos. I take pictures of these flowers scenes so I can make drawings later in the studio. I find that working from the pictures I can’t visualize the depth as well, where my on site drawing I find myself working much more with it. It seems more important for me to incorporate depth into the sketch when I work on site.

I have also been thinking about textures. Recreating the textures of the leaves, flowers, and glass. I got to check out some Van Gogh drawings this summer at the Met. He had a great way of simply creating different textures of landscape with simple line work.

This work has motivated me into wondering how I could translate these into paint. The artist Joan Mitchell comes to mind as an artist that has taken this vision of landscape to some conclusions. Also I found the exhibition of Cecily Brown at the Met quite instructive and much on my mind while working on these.

Art work from summer 2023

Wrapping up another summer art season. An area of thoughts about painting have been along the lines of developing scenarios that let the paint flow, mix and develop on their own. I set parameters of color, and regions of the painting surface for mixing to happen. This system leads to abstract landscape style compositions. 

This summer 2023 I have been working exclusively with Acrylic paints. I feel that the setup and working/drying time has worked with my attention span and schedule. I have been thinning down the paints with water. I haven’t had the budget for getting any mediums. The use of old latex house paint makes the Artist grade Acrylic paint behave in some unpredictable ways. I always welcome that!

Below is a small body of work that I created using scrap wood panels that were used as painted wood grain samples. Not sure if this work is finished yet. I feel it could go in a couple of different directions. Perhaps it could be a background for something painted on top, or just a stand alone abstraction. I need to keep them around and see how I feel in the future.

Archangel Thunderbird

This group evolved from a scrap piece of plywood that was used as a table top cover. It had random paint stains left from other projects. I was using the sulfur yellow color to blend in with actual sulfur powder in a larger series of paintings about the American revolution. I cut down the larger board into smaller fragments. I was holding onto these scraps for quite a while until I found this use. The yellow sulfur color made me think about a sulfur cloud. I added wings. Imagine an Archangel of sulfur and thunder.

"Archangel Thunderbird" 73/4"x 8.5" Oil on panel

"Archangel Thunderbird" 11"x 7.5" Oil on panel

"Archangel Thunderbird" 7.5" x 8" Oil on panel

Spotted Lanternfly "Pest"

 This summer was also the year of the large-scale establishment of the Chinese Lantern Fly in my area. They are quite a striking bug with red and gray wings. They also have a cool spot and line patterns that I thought would make for some interesting abstract paintings. 

I created a number of smaller life size paintings of the whole bug flying. They remind me of a decorative wall paper.