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Friday, May 16, 2008

Impermanence

Summer Gold   watercolor   10 x 10.5
I really do like "shaking it up" in my painting by alternating materials, size and supports. The painting "Summer Gold" is on Yupo paper, a synthetic paper with an extremely coated-like surface. No stroke place on the paper is ever permanent. I liken the experience to painting on wax paper. Dollops of color are dropped onto the surface. Subsequent dollops placed on top tend to remove what was there earlier. Whoa..........this is difficult. The whole experience is like a dance of act-react-act-react. Exciting but difficult. Two artists I know who handle this surface beautifully are Mary Sanders and Susan Kiedio. They achieve wonderful results filled with texture! I was satisfied but found that I sorely missed my calm, flatly-painted areas for relief. This kind of painting, however, breaks up the status quo and expands the problem-solving abilities for further work.