Art In The Pearl: Fine Arts & Crafts Festival

Description:

Combinations of oil, acrylic, oil bar, graphite, and encaustic - on canvas over panel.

This combination is not the same in every piece, varying in response to what's best for the individual painting. Some paintings also include images which are cut from my original black & white photographs, and embedded within the painted surface.

I begin by building canvas-covered hardwood panels. This makes it possible to work with the texture of fabric and also the rigidity of panel. This combination is especially important because some aspects of my process involve texturing with sharpened metal tools.

I work directly on the white gesso surface - creating a rough charcoal sketch, and continuing with layers of pigment and painting medium. For the medium I use a combination of alkyd-walnut medium, stand oil, and damar varnish.

If elements of photography are included they are applied before any oil-based pigments are involved. For this aspect I cut images from my original photographs, and attach them with clear acrylic resin. These are digital photos, which are printed as black & white. I'm interested in these being percieved on close inspection as being what they are - fragments cut from rough digital snapshots that are sometimes pixilated, and exhibit a wide range of clarity. Once the photos are in place they are sealed with matt acrylic so that the oils will not come into direct contact with photo paper.

I mix my own varnish by suspending damar resin within a container of pure gum turpentine. This results in a viscous liquid that is included in every aspect of the process - initially as part of the painting medium, and finally as a protective coating brushed-on to the finished painting.