New Work for "Spawn"

All are around 12" - 14". Top three are the wet-into-wet episode I was bragging about last post. Fourth is a near complete sand-off which was re-constituted and even titled: Puddle Sage. No. 5 is also a rework, after a gentle sanding. Painting is fun.

Scoring Manna

I seem to have hit a sweet spot this week in the studio. Saturday I cut and prepped four new small panels for the show, even though I have only two weeks left before showtime and really need to focus on finishing some work. I gessoed and then base coated them in acrylics and was ready to roll on Sunday. Slam-bam! Wet-into-wet with a pliable brush, 1-2 session paintings. It's been a very long time since I've used this approach (early 1990s?). The scratching and scraping and struggling of the past few years, especially with this body of particular work, just gave way to a more confident, efficient, and focussed image-making. Yee-ha!

About freaking time, though I wasn't even aware how overdue I was for some serious artistic flow.

Ode to the Day's Final Five Minute Judicious Wipe-off

Once the wipe-off/scrape-off option enters my conscious, there's about a 90% chance I'll do it. If I pay attention while doing it, I have about a 25% chance of a cool new better direction for the painting.

This one's all metallic ground, folks, so you're only seeing a sliver. Speaking of sliver, why is every paint store in town out of metallic silver? I had to dig deep to find two dregs tubes that I had to slice open to salvage the silver I so desperately needed to paint, and then wipe off.

Spring Ahead

Nomi Lubin

Collage, 4" x 4"

Countdown to Spawn

I've beveled the edges and attached the permanent mounting frames on the back. HUGE relief, as I spent all of last year NOT dealing with those two things, just planning on figuring something out later. I was able to split 2" x 4"s at a 30 degree angle to make a french cleat for hanging. This from a 15+ year old $120 table saw, and it cut easily.

After I do a couple small client jobs, I will make back mounts for the small pieces, and then will still have a couple weeks to paint/finish how ever many of them I can. These were originally a secondary consideration to the larger pieces, but now I'd like to have a slew of them. I almost want to do an installation now, and jump the painted surface with 3-d augmentation for the show.

That almost always dilutes the tension and concentrated energy of the paintings though.

I also need to write a statement and also think of titles. I'm going to try to drop the numbers and letters and use actual, or pretend, words.

A Teaser

I'm trying to restrain myself from posting recent images of work from my upcoming solo show ("Spawn", Harrison Center in Indy). Here's some shots of current "prep" underway. I must knock off the 1/2" edges from these finished pieces. I like the edges on the smaller ones; they read as a 1970s craft plaque. On these larger pieces it does not work at all.

So I'm sawdust protecting with plastic and then palm sandering with 40 grit. I'm angling the back off, all surfboard-like. Well, semi-surfboard-like, which still takes 1-2 hours per panel, and fills my dual purpose kitchen-woodshop with sawdust...

This has to be the worst dual-purposed room use ever, unless one is low on dietary roughage I suppose.