I love to find new ways to have my paintings move and change, the colors evolving into new shapes, textures, lines, designs and forms.
For a while, I was only dealing with paintings on archival films and synthetics that I could backlight. I was layering the pigments so that the paintings would be completely different when lit from behind. I was working with a scientist who made light panels to simulate sunlight, and they were less than a half inch thick.
I worked with materials from the hardware store, rather than the art supply shop, and set to using sandpaper and waxes, paints and dyes, raw pigment and oil, turpentine and whatever else would provide a way to break into the material I was painting on so that the paints and pigments became part of the surface I was painting on, instead of colors painted on top.
In this way, I was able to create layers of images and colors that echo the Little Prince’s perspective of, “What is essential is invisible to the eye”, and only evident when light shines through the layers, textures, images and colors.
I was reminded of those backlit paintings on various archival films and synthetics, when the painting I am now working on caught the wind and reared up, exposing its underside against the sunlight streaming through.
I see all of my work as one continuous stream, all the paintings connected, the stages I am going through moving back and forth through time, adding colors and and taking them away, like the flow of the tide. This new painting is different from all of my other paintings and it’s in that difference that I find my goal.
I’m not interested in painting in having all of my paintings look alike, I’m interested in the exact opposite. I paint in stages in a larger flow, where everything depends on logistics; my environment, what paints, pigments and materials I have on hand, what I’m feeling, the weather and time of year, and what is on my mind. If you look deep, you’ll find a clear through line to my works.
Besides the colors, it’s all in the eyes.
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