Studio Journal- Entry #9

Studio ED&NM  is bumpin'.  Seriously.


Over the past, ummmm, 2 years, I've been yearning to get my hands on some paint.  Back to back pregnancies kept me away from the sauce though.  It was for the better.  Not just health wise, but in an absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder kinda way.

I've returned to paint as a material and want to explore the 2D nature of a painting.  This series is in perfect tandum to my other work.  Especially the leather fabric works.

I have been thinking a lot about clothing as a material.  Leather mostly.  I was particularly drawn to the history of the material; it moved in and out of a 3D and 2D existence as the material served its different purposes.  First the skin of a living animal (3D), then a raw flat material (2D), then inhabited by a body as clothing (3D), then a return to raw material (2D), and then, after all that, it becomes my art (3D).  This history of its past inhabitants gives the material a unique character that is alluring to me.


I find that it is this sensual nature of the material that I am responding to.   And it seems fitting. in this light, that my work is 3D in nature, hovering between painting and sculpture.  I experience these materials in real time, I feel it, smell it, hold it, move it with my hands.... and all this knowledge I gain from manipulating the material, I hope to convey to the viewer.  So my work does not try to be be purely visual.  It wants to engage in a very sensual way.

So, I took this experience I had with the material of used clothing back to the more traditional painting materials, canvas and paint.  I am playing with the idea of making a 3D object out of a flat object or the repetition of an action that, in singularity, traditional has flat results.  I'm still trying to flesh out the idea more clearly...

But I've started gathering theses stained/painted roughly rectangular strips of canvas.  I just glued some 25 of them together with mat medium.  Its pretty hefty.  Not so sure the glue is gonna stick.  Well, I guess I'll see on friday how that goes.

Things to do:

Clean this wall.  And the floor, too.

    Use this drop cloth.  The awesome stains that the drying of the canvas

 swatches left behind will find its way into the next project.

Keep layering on the paint on these bad boys.