It is mid-summer. 

I have the next four weeks “off” to do pretty much what I want with paint, subject matter and experimentation. My commitments to my galleries is complete at the moment. I have had a few imagined paintings on my mind that I would like to realize and am now doing so.

The biggest change-up has been to paint on canvas stapled to the wall as most contemporary painters do. I figure out the size of the image beforehand and add a 6” margin around the imagined image and tape it off. The wall allows more gestural movement than painting flat and adds a little more spontaneity because of the gravity drips and happy accidents. I relate it to dancing, because the body is doing considerable more choreography. Less control for sure. When painting flat on wood-panels, chisels, scrapers, and razor blades are used to carve into the paint during the application process. Can’t do that with canvas, because it rips under that kind of pressure. Somewhat limiting. So far I have done three pieces on the wall with pretty successful results. I get the image fully blocked in and about 2/3 done and then take it down and stretch it onto prefab heavy duty stretcher bars. The largest I have done so far is 42 “ x 72”. I would like to go bigger, but am not sure about storage, transportation and gallery reaction…yet.

When the almost finished painting is stretched, I place it flat and complete the finishing work with oil sticks, paint and water-soluable crayons. This entire exercise is an interesting change-up and adds to experimentation…sometimes echoing more traditional methods than normally used. This will be continued for two or three more paintings this summer and then re-evaluated. I still think painting on panels allows more control (for me) and unconventional ways to deal with the paint, but limits the size potential.