“Painted sounds”

This series of painted panels are in their second or third reincarnation by now. They began as monoprints on primed plywood, put through a printing press with crumpled sheets of inked plastic–which marks up the surface and embosses the texture in an interesting way, and also wards off blank canvas anxiety! I like printing on wood, for practical as well as aesthetic reasons. If the piece works right away, you can just glue strips of furring along the back edges, and call it framed. If it doesn’t quite work, you can paint over it loosely with gesso, and let that first layer serve as a suggestive underpainting.  And if the next round isn’t really conclusive, you can always sand the surface down part way and repaint it, or  weather and distress it, to see what new ideas present themselves. Plywood panels don’t take up much storage space, or get too wrinkly, if you need to put them aside for a while….

When I recently rediscovered these pieces hibernating on a high shelf, they reminded me of the music I had been listening to in my studio while working on them. I thought that might be an interesting direction to pursue; but they seemed to need more detail. So I tried gluing on the tiniest slivers of patterned papers to reinforce the movement–using bits of papers collected over the years, as well as evocative images from old manuscripts and documents– scanned, altered, and printed. This is an approach I haven’t tried before, and one I look forward to experimenting with. I found that gluing the papers with matt medium works well, keeping the shininess under control, and–if applied judiciously–the printing inks from running. I found it easier cutting with nail scissors than Xacto blades (however I think I feel a tearing period coming on!…)  It will probably take a while to know which of these are actually finished, but here is where they stand today. 

(Note to Mom! try clicking on “view all images”…)