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From the Studio, Part Whatever

At the end of 2010, I began working on a set of 18" x 24" panels, that I posted about here regularly during the first few months of working on them. Gradually, I posted less and less, as I got stuck with them and worked on them less and less. But every six months or so since then, I have taken some of these panels out and worked a little more on them, to the extent that the first coat is now buried beneath many layers of stuff.

Well, god help me, I pulled one of them out today, and worked on it for a day:


If I can recall correctly, the media that I've used over three years are: acrylic paint, acrylic gels and medium, airbrush pigment, gesso, modelling paste, ink, and oil pastel. If I used a texture, or I drew a shape, what I had in mind were things to do with coal, and mining, just the same as the short film I just completed. Some of the abstract marks still derive ultimately from remembered shapes of machinery, pipes, and so on.

For this latest foray, I took out lots of work on Japanese paper (ink drawings and prints), tore them into strips, and began collaging them to the surface using acrylic medium. It produces a pleasing extra layer of tone and texture, covering up the preceding layers but not entirely. Here is a close-up of one part:


The fibres of the paper are working with the black ink and acrylic paint underneath. I like the effect, though who knows whether I will call this picture 'done' -- after three years! -- or whether I'll keep working on it until 2016.

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