This is a painting I made in the fall of 2017 in my studio in Lowell, MA. It is a layered composition involving multiple techniques and media.
I started the painting on raw, unstretched canvas laid across my work table. I put down some doodles in paint marker including the yellow lines you can see at the top, some of the pink scribbles, and some of the black and red doodles.
After letting this initial layer dry for a bit, I sprayed the canvas with water and worked the water into the fibers with a silicone sculpting tool. This primes the canvas to pull highly pigmented high flow acrylic paint into it, creating a sort of died effect with nice, subtle gradients like you see in the pink in the lower left corner. I've been doing paintings like this where I soak the entire canvas before applying the high flow, but have been experimenting with selective wetting, which prevents pigment from flowing into certain areas, so you can see in this painting that areas at the top of the painting and on the lower right side have remained untouched.
On top of the soaked in layer I've applied a succession of layers of doodles, poured paint, and dripped on clear acrylic media.
The light bluish violet tint which you can see in the mid-upper left is an interference pigment which varies in color and transparency depending on viewing angle.
After the painting was finished and dry I stretched it across a set of professional grade, gallery depth stretcher bars. Stretching the painting after it is done creates the impression that the painting is a free standing object rather than an image on a surface. I recommend hanging this painting without a frame in order to take advantage of this effect.
I'm working with the tension between the built up surface where all the layers are playing off of each other and the raw canvas background which I have allowed to show through in places, especially in the upper parts and lower left of this painting. I've also incorporated some text snippets, mostly of phrases I hear in songs or in radio programs, and which are intended only as a sort of way to pull the moment into the painting. They are as much about filling space as they are anything else.
