10 Year Anniversary: The Painting Diary 8 of 30
Painting Diary 8 0f 30: Huxley, 2012
Here’s another one straight outta the back of the Arkansas metal shop. I went to the local lumber yard and built this big 48x60 inch board at the shop. I wanted to take full advantage of an art studio where it truly didn’t matter if I spilled buckets of paint on the floor and splashed it across the walls. I wanted to paint like a true maniac and thats what I did here with this abstract painting. I laid my board down on the greasy ancient concrete shop floor, and went to town with huge brushes, dripping and slopping watered-down acrylic paint across broad areas. I’d get it nice and loaded with paint and then pick it up and let the paint run down as I moved the board, manipulating the stream of color trailing down and pooling on the floor. No drop cloth, no plan, no rules.
When I painted this my tree obsession had branched out into roots and bark. I went through about 100 large sheets of multimedia paper exploring different bark textures alone, and they may have all been warm ups for this one. Although I wasn’t deliberately painting bark that’s what it looks like to me now. Someone once hung this horizontally and it suddenly transformed from bark into a sunset beach scene that was almost better than the vertical orientation . Maybe it should be up to the future owner to decide which way to hang this. I like the idea of interactive or transmutable art. I’m not really in charge, I just work here.
Anyway, this was super satisfying to paint. I tried this approach a few more times but this one was my favorite one, and remains one of the biggest paintings I’ve made.
When it came time to drive back to Washington State the following year I was barely able to get this beast in my Honda Element. It was crammed in there diagonally with all manner if stuff I had accumulated over the last year. By the time I got back home with it 2k miles later, something had been rubbing against it and drilled a small hole clear through the board. Oops. No worries, nothing a little modeling paste couldn’t fix.
Huxley, Acrylic and oil on board, 2012