Earth Window Series

March 2, 2008

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I’ve been working on a group of paintings that I’ve been calling the Earth Window Series. The paintings in this series have been taking on many different sizes, palettes, and textures, but they all share a common motif – which is the “window” or the usually squarish geometrical shapes that seem to be finding their way into them. The painting to the right is a newly finished piece from the series. The picture below shows this same piece at an earlier stage. The very first layer of this piece (not shown here) was created by applying washes of bronze colored paint & earthy colors like burnt sienna & yellow oxide.

Over that color layer I used blue painter’s tape to mask off different shapes. A slightly darker color was then painted over the tape, so that when the tape was removed the image beneath stood out. To create the white splatter lines I drizzled gesso (a surface primer) across the surface in both thick and thin line patterns. I truly enjoy the spontaneity of this process and have been exploring it in my newest paintings. This technique borrows directly from action painters like Jackson Pollock (more on this in a later post). Briefly though, in action painting, the materials are applied to the surface in a very spontaneous manner, such as dripping, splashing, or smearing.

In the final layer, I applied more blue painter’s tape to the surface (and this is where the “windows” emerged yet again!) After creating a composition with the stencils I did a final wash, adding some deep reds and sections of deeper blue to add depth and help the window images “pop.”

Here are a couple details from the painting…


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