Walk on the wild side...

In the past few days I began combining some of the recent experiments and I also loosened up a lot. Partly this means that I will possibly have to kiss the deposit for my apartment good-bye. My apartment also acts as studio and - well - if you have carpeting and prefer not to live in a total mess, you have to hold back a little bit in your painting style... no flinging paint at the canvas from 10 feet away, for instance (except if you moved the stereo and TV to the "safe corner of the room" first). I'm only half kidding ;)

Well, let's just say that the recent experiments, with more liquid paint, mixing weird stuff into my work (saw dust, wood shavings, sand, loose pigment, dripping housepoint all over the stuff etc etc) are not exactly methods that guarantee a nice clean carpet afterwards... And they definitely make the apartment smell bad (house point stinks!!)

So here we go. Two new pieces. I thought the first one was a bit on the wild side... till I painted the second one. The first piece is regular oils on canvas (tons of paint with a lot of stand oil and linseed oil dripped on, mixed in etc etc.)

But the second piece is on heavy burlap. It started out with regular oils, then I slapped paper collages on it, then mixed in sand, wood shavings, coffee grounds, saw dust. When it still looked to tame, I dragged it out on the balcony, took three large cups, mixed house paint with sand and saw dust and stand oil and just whatever I could get my hands on and - well - layered it on. Then I poured and drizzled house paint on the whole thing from a distance. I felt almost like an "Aktionskuenstler" ;)

The think the resulting pieces is actually quite interesting. It definitely shows that I had a bit of tension and aggression in me that I had to get out...? What do you think? So we'll see how this will look when it's dry. Right now it's still dripping all over the carpet.

Experiments / Update

On my last post I mentioned my experiments with house-paint and from an earlier post it's obvious that I"m interested in the wrinkle effect. Here is an update about how these pieces developed / evolved over time. The photos I posted last were taken right after I had painted the pieces so the paint was nice and smooth. But did it develop wrinkles?

Indeed it did. Here is a comparison, side by side of the state right after painting and of the state about a week later. I'm also happy to report that the piece is pretty much dry, which I can never claim of my other oil pieces after a week. That's pretty amazing. Of course it IS house paint (lower pigment load, lower end pigments, it has no body, it stinks to high heaven and and and) but I can see myself working more with that kind of paint in the future - especially for large pieces where I really want to "fling paint".

Here are the two main pieces I did back then in full in their current state. Yes, one of them is indeed very long and skinny. That one is done on a scrap piece of board, the other one is on canvas. I did mention that those are experimental pieces, right?

must-post-to-blog....

No, I haven't been very active lately. But I have been thinking about stuff...

A while back I wrote about wrinkle paint and how to achieve that. I also found out that some people use household paint for humongous (sp?) pieces and they got really nice wrinkles sometimes. Well, the pieces I'm thinking of also have about 1" of paint on them that could have something to do with it. However it may be, I was curious about how painting with inexpensive household paint would feel. So I got some. Standard oil-based Ace hardware paint. I got only a few small cans. I knew it was much more liquid and drippy (just shake the can to test that). Now how do they build up thick paint films with such a thin paint? I still don't know! But I have a suspicion that those artists might mix in a lot of stand oil and maybe other additives as well. Or build it up in many layers? Or both.

Anyway, today I played around and it turns out this is really fun. Because they paints are so much more liquid they naturally lend themselves to "Pollock style" drip paintings, which was my first experiment. Then I let the paint run. Then I drizzled linseed oil and stand oil over them. Then sprinkled coffee grounds and sand. And so forth. You get the picture: a wild experimentation session.

In any case, some of the effects I got are quite interesting. Because the paint is much more liquid you get some almost watercolor like effects where colors run into each other and mix a bit. Not quite like water color of course, but it has a bit of a watercolor feel to it, if that makes sense. And I have the impression it is still changed as it is drying.

The stuff is still drying (and stinking) out on the balcony. I'll post some more in a few days when I can assess the damage, so to speak. I predict that the paint will wrinkle where I put a lot of extra oil in. Let's see. Next time I might also mix in some cobalt dryer. Stay tuned.

The Garden of Abstract Desires

Here is a little print that was a long time in the making. I actually started this linocut almost a year ago on a trip to Austria. The original idea was capture the pattern of beech bark on a couple of trees in the garden. Essentially it showed just the 4 tree trunks. Then the plate sat there for months, untouched. A few months ago I pulled it out again and after some thinking just added some abstract lines. Then another long pause. And finally I worked on it a longer evening a few weeks ago and suddenly it turned into an interesting print. With a few final touches "The Garden of Abstract Desires" was completed.

The piece is an EV (Varied Edition) on several different kinds of handmade papers, printed in light ocher which gives the piece it's character. Every print of the edition is slightly different because some of the papers are smoother than others, have different colors, different inclusions. The photo shown is one of the smoother prints, selected to tone down the influence of paper structure on the print.



The other print was a quicky little cut on a pastic/rubber type carving board. Not particular theme there. I just sketched and cut along with reckless abandon and this little print emerged. Good little print for greeting cards and such.

Another Tshirt

I didn't have too much luck with my last T-shirt design so I had to try once more. Despite what I said on the past post I'm giving cafepress another chance. So far, my store is up for over a day and they have not gone in an randomly deleted it. So far so good.

Yes, it's very geeky humor, indeed. Talk about target audience and such ;)

And you can get these shirts in a variety of colors from my cafepress store here: http://www.cafepress.com/cul7r/.
Isn't life wonderful?