Thorough considerations

 Detail of a work in progress, September 2020

A few weeks ago, I purchased three 60" x 60" pre-stretched canvases made by *Fredrix. In the past, I would not have dared buy a pre-stretched canvas, preferring to stretch my own instead. Back then, and I'm talking about 15-20 years ago, store bought canvases were simply not well made at all. They were usually prone to warping and the quality of canvas, in addition to overall workmanship, was pretty bad. However, having worked at Artist & Craftsman for just over four years, I got to see and experience first hand the different kinds of quality of art materials that are out there. Seeing how well the Fredrix canvases were put together was great to see. The solidity and strength of the wood stretchers themselves won me over. That, and the fact that a very well-respected painter colleague of mine uses them for her work prompted me to try them out. 

Aside from the occasional temporary mural-sized pieces I've made over the past couple of years, I had not been making larger paintings of 60 inches plus for at least 6 years. All that changed this year  because of two things: needing larger sized works for some of Bridgette's clients and starting to work with a new gallery in Los Angeles called ParisTexas LA. Before this year, going back to 2013, I hadn't worked on canvas much at all, preferring birch panels, instead. For a lot of my work, I prefer the hardness of panels over canvas because the panels can take a lot of abuse from sanding and scraping. The flexibility of canvas is nice in it's own way, but I still prefer panels, overall. The only thing about panels that I don't like is the propensity to warp above a certain size and they tend to become too heavy and cost a lot to transport. 

So, a couple of weeks ago, I began painting on one of the three canvases I have and I love how the first one has turned out. With canvas, my painting habit is one that's additive, as opposed to the panel works where I can employ both additive and subtractive methods of image-building. What I love about the Fredrix canvases is that they are really tight. I've been able to stretch larger canvases pretty tight, but these are drum-tight for well into the painting process. 

The one new larger canvas I've completed is titled, "It's Not The Same You" and employs a lot of image-making practices I've introduced over the past three years of so on smaller surfaces. I feel like it's one of those stand alone paintings that I absolutely had to make in order to fulfill the promise of so many recent small works and ideas pulled from the temporary mural pieces  and wall- based installations I've been making as of late. The second of these canvases has already started out being something entirely different in how I'm envisioning it and I'm loving the potential in it. 

One thing about being able to focus on my painting full time is having the time and head-space to more thoroughly consider what I'm doing with my paintings. Being able to have the time to really let a painting sit for a couple of days and to be able to look at it any time of the day is still somewhat foreign to me. I'm excited at being able to engage with the work on a day-to-day basis and not have my energies redirected to day-job tasks. Having had all of those years of making the most of a few hours a week dedicated to my painting has helped a lot in terms of realizing how much I can get done now.

*Note: this is not a paid endorsement for Fredrix products, I'm just voicing my own opinions about their canvases*

Ready...

Studio 4.13.12: Panels prepped for use

I'm super-stoked for my in-studio residency beginning tomorrow morning. I spent some time the past couple of days moving things around and getting finished paintings away from my main working area. Tomorrow, I'm going to finish up a couple of small pieces that have been in-progress for a while and begin work on some new things specifically for this project. I haven't a clue as to what that will be until I'm done. Now, all that's to be done is to get to work...

in progress

Some new things happening in the studio. All are in progress- 24" x 24", acrylic on panel.

surface tension

Standing Stains

Pretty productive day. The panels I've been using recently are taking some getting used to, but I like them. The best thing is not having to spend much prep time on them. I buy them, seal the surface, wait for it to dry, put another layer of sealant on, wait for that to dry and I'm ready to go. I've taken to buying a couple of them each week so I have a collection ready to paint on.

I was in the Artist and Craftsman store today and discovered that they now have the deep cradled (1.5" wide) panels in addition to the standard ones. Of course I had to get two of the new panels.

I'm going to have to stretch some canvases sometime soon, I think. When I'm working on the panels, I miss the give and feel of canvas, and then I'll miss the take-a-lot-of-punishment surfaces of the panels It's good to have both to work on so both urges can be satisfied.

16 Blanks

16 Blanks

Those are 16 new 6" x 6" panels I'm planning on using for a new series. I spent most of the afternoon and evening sawing and glueing. The panels I purchased in four packs and added the wood supports myself. I enjoy doing prep work like that, but towards the end of the night, I just wanted to be done. I almost stopped for the day, but decided that it would be better to push through and finish the last few. The more I finished, the faster I could move on and get to working on them. I've had it in my head for a while to do some smaller pieces after working on larger paintings for two back-to-back shows this summer. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of working on such an intimate scale.

Of course, there are more paintings swirling around in my head, as well. There are some ideas from the 'Stratum' series that I want to pursue in different ways so there are some potentially interesting artistic challenges to work out this winter.

I rarely read, much less buy, Artforum. There was one of the October issues on the shelf with a striking image of two casts of Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk on the cover. Next to the image was the title, The Art of Production. After wading through the first 150 pages of gallery exhibition ads, I found the articles, all of which explore the issue of the 'readymade' and artists who have to rely on fabricators to realize their works. That was worth it, so I wound up buying the mag. I'm looking forward to reading about how the artists they feature deal with the fabrication process and having teams of people essentially produce their work.

I often wonder where some of the artists get the money to have large projects done and I'm sure a lot of the money comes from grants and so forth. Then there are others, most notably the blue-chip names that probably get backing from the galleries and institutions they are associated with.