New Work

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned here that I had dug out two large stretched canvases and Gesso'd them to prepare to make new work with them. One of them is hanging in my living room now, and this one was finished in the studio this morning.

Abstract, 30" x 40", stretched canvas

This is another piece in my exploration of hand prints, almost as an answer to my Dear Dad series. I've been playing with my own hand prints lately, stacking them in the same fashion as the Stacked Journaling featured in the Dear Dad series, and this is another expression of that playfulness.

This piece began with Stacked Journaling applied to the primed canvas with a thick, black Sharpie. The Journaling became almost utterly obscured by subsequent layers which were fashioned by smearing my gloved hands with Golden's fiber paste and pressing them repeatedly onto a primed canvas. After the paste dried, many layers of acrylic paint washes were applied. Buried about halfway in is a second layer of fiber paste hand prints, as well.

While this work may appear to be fairly aggressive because of its color palette and composition, it doesn't feel that way to me. This was a fun, joyful process that felt far more unselfconscious than some of my more recent, genuinely darker stuff.

Happy creating!