STUDIO NOTES
ART & HISTORY
I cover the floor with cardboard panel and lie the canvas fabric on top, they’re mostly salvaged pieces that I accepted after sorting through textures. I pick through an array of patterns and colors, my fingertips validate them. I’m looking for grit and weight, and shapes or chemically set dyes in the fabric that give me suggestions. Sometimes when I like the background to remain a focal point, other times I do my best to cover it. I work with a sense of endurance that keeps impatience right behind it.
I work in fabric but I like working quickly, I enjoy responding, and wet paint is very consuming of a sudden sporadic gesture, so often these fabric pieces can take two sessions unless the room is very hot. The piece comes together in a space that leaves little room around it for me to walk around or lean over it from, so I sit and stretch and stand in the piece. I have socks and pants designated to endure the process. It’s on the floor and i’m in a hurry to begin so often i don’t have them mounted or kept in place, so when i get on top of it to reach a corner it moves with me, and i adjust it, and it moves again, and the creases are apart of the nature.
These pieces are not purely ornamental but containers of the created experience. The creases are not ironed, it’s an old piece of fabric, it’s been somewhere before I got it, and when I did, I moved with it, the paint splattered there, it won’t be corrected. I run a thin line between refinement and authenticity. I need to convey images clearly enough, but a stray stroke is nothing harmful. I set up a camera and sometimes I record, I listen to music of all sorts but often depending on my mood, the mood of the painting, the weather outside, what’s on my mind the music choice changes. It takes time to dip into the correct auditory frequency that inspires me to begin and can help sustain the entire session, but when I reach that flow state of production it hardly matters exactly what plays next.
I use cheap paint, Phoenix or Soho would resign my practice to sticky notes, I need pigment, I need it fast, I need it unsparingly. I buy apple barrel paint, I buy Meeden and that was an expense, I use paint from an overstock store for about 3 dollars a tube, that’s an expense when I need to replace a lot of colors. I use old brushes, I rinse them in an old Wawa cup. I use a palette that is hardened with layers and layers of old dry acrylic. It's a paper plate, Dixie, that had been an expense. My larger palette is a plastic lid to a box of spinach. I use it for oil paints but it all mixes together now, it’s not as old as the Dixie and it’s gaining its strength over time. I find a completely quiet studio suffocating, it's loud, it’s like it blares how alone and how singular I am in the studio space.
I work in fabric but I like working quickly, I enjoy responding, and wet paint is very consuming of a sudden sporadic gesture, so often these fabric pieces can take two sessions unless the room is very hot. The piece comes together in a space that leaves little room around it for me to walk around or lean over it from, so I sit and stretch and stand in the piece. I have socks and pants designated to endure the process. It’s on the floor and i’m in a hurry to begin so often i don’t have them mounted or kept in place, so when i get on top of it to reach a corner it moves with me, and i adjust it, and it moves again, and the creases are apart of the nature.
These pieces are not purely ornamental but containers of the created experience. The creases are not ironed, it’s an old piece of fabric, it’s been somewhere before I got it, and when I did, I moved with it, the paint splattered there, it won’t be corrected. I run a thin line between refinement and authenticity. I need to convey images clearly enough, but a stray stroke is nothing harmful. I set up a camera and sometimes I record, I listen to music of all sorts but often depending on my mood, the mood of the painting, the weather outside, what’s on my mind the music choice changes. It takes time to dip into the correct auditory frequency that inspires me to begin and can help sustain the entire session, but when I reach that flow state of production it hardly matters exactly what plays next.
I use cheap paint, Phoenix or Soho would resign my practice to sticky notes, I need pigment, I need it fast, I need it unsparingly. I buy apple barrel paint, I buy Meeden and that was an expense, I use paint from an overstock store for about 3 dollars a tube, that’s an expense when I need to replace a lot of colors. I use old brushes, I rinse them in an old Wawa cup. I use a palette that is hardened with layers and layers of old dry acrylic. It's a paper plate, Dixie, that had been an expense. My larger palette is a plastic lid to a box of spinach. I use it for oil paints but it all mixes together now, it’s not as old as the Dixie and it’s gaining its strength over time. I find a completely quiet studio suffocating, it's loud, it’s like it blares how alone and how singular I am in the studio space.