Getting a Few Things Off My Chest
I've been rattled by events of the world, and wasn't able to let the angst go in order to work in the studio, so I invited the misery in and pinned up a canvas to get a few things off my chest. It was very helpful, and while I softened some of the initial output with more marks and washes, the cacophony of words and imagery were pleasing. In this video, the painting is nearly complete.
Painting Process - Autumn
It's autumn, and the colors of the woods and prairie are coming into the studio. The doors and windows are open, the air is sunny and fresh.Paintings begin on the ground, where thinned acrylic paint is pushed into the canvas, using gloved hands, brushes, gravity and sometimes brooms. This forms the atmosphere in which the painting lives. Then the canvas is pinned to the wall, where more opaque mark making is laid down. Sometimes it goes from floor to wall and back again, numerous times until it is completely resolved.
con·crete: adjective/ 1. existing in a material or physical form; real or solid; not abstract.
Like most artists, I've always carved out a place to work that had one criteria: available space. Working for years in a 100 year old sleeping porch without heat or cooling; on the living room floor covered in plastic; pinning canvases on round hay bales to finish; tacking canvases up on the side of the house or barn, and on clotheslines. Most recently I've been working between an abandoned basketball court and an upstairs bedroom with a wall knocked out, hauling paints and water and extension cords out to the court 50 yards from the house, hefting stained canvases back upstairs to finish, stretching canvases in the front hall, storing in the basement, maneuvering large finished work over a balcony when it won't go down the stairs. So many stairs, so many 30 yard rolls of canvases and hoses and cords and pounds of paints and brushes on the move.
After years of dreaming and planning for this new studio, I've begun working on the completed concrete pads that are on two sides of the studio. There's shade, water, electricity. The surface of the concrete is perfectly to spec: a tiny bit of texture to prevent slipping when it's wet, but not enough to impact brush strokes on raw canvases laying flat, and smooth enough to avoid tearing up bare feet. Sawed cracks form golden ratios in key places for cutting canvases to size. It tilts a little less than industry standard, 1" over 15', so the paint will stay put when poured on canvas. The canvases can move directly from the pad, up 3 stairs and inside the studio to eventually pin on walls. The paints move on a table on wheels between work areas.
The ease and grace! Looking up from the intensity of the design, details, numbers, drawings and actual building, I'm catching a glimmer of how this can be.
The ever changing concrete patinas begin.
Building a Studio: The Fluidity of Sheetrock
The sanding crew was warm and fluid this morning, and moved as one, finishing each step within a minute of each other.
This time lapse clip shows them perfectly orchestrated, and they were synchronized with the many guitars on the radio, which isn't heard now.
When they were packing up, I showed them this time lapse clip and they laughed uproariously, slapping their legs and taking their hats off, running their hands through their hair, HAHAHAHA!!
They kept laughing all the way down the 3/8 mile long driveway. Then I could hear them turn onto the pavement, still laughing. These patterns make me feel like my lungs are filled with oxygen.
Building a Studio
Five years of planning a new studio, now becoming a reality!
The tallest wall is 17', and the footprint is 32'x60', which will allow tacking up multiple large scale canvases at once to view and complete, as well giving the physical space to really breathe and expand. For years, in order to get perspective and fine tune the piece, I've been tacking huge canvases up on the side of the house on a windless day, or spreading large work out on the grass and climbing to the top of the house/studio, dashing up and down the stairs to pour paint and make marks.
The building process is extraordinarily beautiful, feeling much more like a large scale sculpture project, than building construction. Long thoughtful planning to consider shapes and balance, placing windows and doors for best light and to track the sun's movement, are now lifting off of the flat page and taking form! To walk under the trusses with the sun and sky above them, is to watch a beautifully choreographed, rhythmic dance.
Connection, On and Off Court
Working extra large the last warm days in November, relishing the vast elbow room of the open air on the basketball court -
In part because I kept forgetting to bring the scissors, it grew wider, then wider.
I don't quite want to dip- or triptych it yet. It's called Connection and is 68"x204"(17').
The details...
Big Sky, a Basketball Court and Yellow
Large scale paintings begin on a concrete slab that was formerly a basketball court.
It's windy on this high ridge, so rocks hold the canvas in place. A garden hose is used to size the canvas.
The space - big sky, a slab of concrete, 30 yard rolls of canvases - naturally calls for paintings to scale. When they're brought inside, it's surprising how large they are.
Yellow borders the court.