Painting February 2019

 

 I start my pieces by painting first-always abstracts.  This February I finished eight pieces on small washes I had done in 2014, but had never been able to figure out how to use the paintings, much as I loved them, but was finally able to do so now, 7 years later, and I loved the results ( One Face IIII ).  I was trying to remember how I had done the washes, and really couldn’t.  It had to do with water and a spray bottle and maybe a little bit of rubbing alcohol, and maybe on a surface of that was prepped with dry wall mud.  Maybe—or maybe not. Who knew?  So I started out with my wash brushes and water and paint and a spray bottle of isopropyl alcohol and a number of panels and canvases that I had already prepped, some with dry wall mud, some with just gesso.  Almost all were surfaces that I had painted over of older paintings. My plan was just to “experiment”since I had just committed over $800 to having large panels made for me, and I wanted to have an idea of where I needed to go before I started on the “good stuff”.  What a joke.  Turns out “experimenting” means the same thing as cut lose and try anything you can think of on any surface that you have prepped in the studio and just hope that you remember how you got there because you certainly aren’t taking any notes. Some 20 paintings later I was thrilled with where the water and paint and isopropyl alcohol had taken me, all ready for something new and unexpected to happen on these beautiful new surfaces.