Paintings in Progress

This is a vague documentation of how the first Ice series came about. This is the second batch of 6x6 paintings to be sold on UGallery.com. I can't say "Ice series" anymore without feeling lame, so they will have a new title. (I should write a post about how I title my work). I just happened to have my digital camera with me, so these are very informal.

Here is an example of the first "laying of the paint" as my statement once described it (I can't get that phrase out of my head either... is this what happens to artists who use the same practice over and over? Words and phrases are repeated so often that it's almost irritating!). I use a combination of liquitex heavy body acrylic and craft paint. Craft paint is essential and quite useful for these ice paintings because of the way the paint spreads out under the ice. It is easily manipulated and very liquid in contrast to the heavy body paint which I use to make focal points. This first step of my painting is done very quickly and intuitively, in terms of placement and color combinations.

On the note of color combinations, you can see that I gravitate toward warm colors. "Sunset colors," I call them, because my only note of cool color appears with a rich, lavender purple.

Here is the ice beginning to melt and black gesso on the remaining canvases. The first hour of ice melting is lovely. It makes beautiful photography. I can literally stand and watch it melt. I hope to make a film of this process sometime.

This is much later in the process, after the ice on the white background has melted and the pools of color already evaporated. Here, the color on the black background is within the first hour of melting, as well as the second layer of color on the white background. I chose to sell some of these paintings on black gesso because of the popularity of Glurst and Eglowsystems.

This is later yet. I'm thinking of doing a special painting (I like calling it the "special edition science fiction") on the black gessoed canvas in the lower left corner, leaving one edge of the canvas raw without gesso and using cool blues and greens and silver instead of gold to make the imagery. I'm not hot (pun intended) on the cool color idea but I think its worth a go.