11.15.07

Less bitch and moan / more art

Posted in Uncategorized at 11:56 am by Fletcher

I know I must sound like a little kid with a skinned knee, so I’m taking a break from the increasingly frustrating mess that is online video and why these sites don’t have their $#!+ together and getting back to that which gives me the greatest mix of challenge and satisfaction: painting.

This is the next one in the ‘Girl at the Window’ series - I got a few 18″x24″ canvases cheap, so I may end up doing a triptych of her. Each in a different style. This one I’ve gone for a very thick, or ‘impasto’ look, slathering on paint like I was frosting a cake.

*One of the greatest shocks I ever got as an artist was going to the Norman Rockwell museum and seeing what the man actually created. Having seen his work on magazine covers, I was expecting cute little paintings on small(ish) canvas, blah blah blah… Shock One: They’re freakin’ HUGE, 8, 10, 12 foot monsters, the man obviously had a good ladder. Shock Two: I was expecting a ‘old master’ style of many layers of thin, built up glazes, nope. The man spackled his paint on, must have used a mortar trowel to do it. Which is why it always behooves you to go to the museum and see them for yourselves*

The trick is that nowadays paint is really freakin’ expensive and even ’student’ grade tubes can add up. To paint in such a lavish manner requires additives - I’m using Golden’s MSA gel, a custom product that stinks like an industrial accident and flexes like a tranquilized gymnast. I had a can from my old Pearl Paint days and even though its been sitting in a closet for about a decade, its still good.

I like this style - texture is always good, feels more alive, more passionate. Even if I’m not all that great at it.

Which is my own self-deprecation speaking - and that topic will be dealt with in a later post.

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