Black + Blue 47
30" x 30" x 1.75"
This new Black + Blue painting displays a nice contrast from the soft, and maybe distant upper background, to the dark and substantial foreground. I like how the blue seems to move in and out of both background and foreground. The size is 30" x 30".
The powdered black iron oxide used in my black ceramic glaze is also used to create my paintings. I mix the iron with water in a variety of dilutions from mostly water to an almost paste-like quality. I paint by pouring the iron onto wood panel that has been primed, sanded and prepped with absorbent ground. During the process, I am responding to the shapes, horizon lines, and sedimentary lines that naturally form, much like fractals, branches of a tree, or a root structure. The painting must stay wet while I work in layers and is sprayed with varnish before an isolation coat of acrylic medium is applied. They are finished with a matte UV protectant varnish. The paintings are textured and tactile and explore similar form, edge, and three-dimensionality as in my ceramic work. I am drawn to a sense of timelessness, the origin story of a stone, a glacier, or cracked desert earth - something that roots us in our existence beyond what humans have constructed.