This painting reflects a recent approach that I'm taking in my work. I wanted to use oil and wax, paint on wood, paint over spackle, and wanted to use an image that feels like a vintage photograph. I wanted something that felt old and timeless, but with a contemporary edge.
Blackbird Crossing
8x8" Oil and wax over spackle on un-cradled panel.
This painting reflects a recent approach that I'm taking in my work. I wanted to use oil and wax, paint on wood, paint over spackle, and wanted to use an image that feels like a vintage photograph. I wanted something that felt old & timeless, but with a contemporary edge.
I received an email recently from a beekeeper on the East Coast. After some talk back and forth about the paintings, he mentioned that he enjoyed some of my earlier work that involved wax. It got me thinking: what was it about that medium that I enjoyed? Why did I move away from it? I thought I'd go back in and give it another whirl. The beauty of using cold wax medium is that when mixed with oil paint it becomes more matte and creates interesting textures. You have to really play with it to figure out the right ratios of oil to wax and pay attention to drying times. I also mix in alkyd medium to control gloss and flow. So, that's what I'm using here and in some other works soon to follow. The spackle came again from earlier works that I had experimented with. The spackle creates a textured surface that emulates an old frescoed wall. I wanted the painting to have that texture... of feeling a bit rough, not so pristine and smack of something old. As for the imagery, I have birds on the brain lately. as I'm reading a book called Birdology. I had done a recent painting using a similar image, and just really wanted to paint birds in flight again. In keeping with the mood that I was after, I was thinking about vintage cameras and film and what the image would look like if it were taken with a pinhole camera. I wanted a painting that had an image that was fleeting, with a look that speaks of age and time passed.
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