Rules to Painting

 My paint on the welding table.

Stay within the lines and don't make a mess.  Those were the only rules I remembered from my grade school days.  We didn't have a regular art teacher and art taught every day. Once every two weeks the art teacher would visit our class for an hour and we would "do art." This was in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade and she must have had some affect on me as I still remember her name.  Mrs Albright
taught all kinds of art, painting and ceramics and mask-making over balloons.  Thanks to my mother (mothers save everything!) I still have some of my original pieces!  Only a mother would like them.
    Except for painting houses and apartment complexes I hadn't painted, the art kind of stuff, since 3rd grade. One day I got a notion and I am not sure what caused it, I just felt like painting.  I began with 12 colors, all acrylic and some cheap throw away brushes.  I had no idea what I was doing. I am not even sure what a "color wheel" is and the only rule I remembered was "paint within the lines."

 My first paintings were on copper.

     Well, I am a mad painter so I threw that rule out first thing!  Not angry, just passionate and impetuous, quick, fast, now!

I forgot to buy canvas!  My shop is a welding shop and what I had to work with was metal.
I found some copper panels and a few stainless steel panels and began painting on these.  It is actually a fun experience.  The paint is alive.
Paper and canvas suck up the paint and it stays where you put it.  On metal there is no absorption,
the paint is easily teased, slow to dry and eager to move about.  The artist looses a little bit of control

Camera or Poetry?

and the paint acquires a will of its own.

Initially I just played. Experimenting. What happens when I do this or that?  And then if I liked something, always the thought, "how in the heck did I do that?"  That is the problem of painting by accident, difficult to recreate.

 Dark Moments on Metal

I did not want to be a camera painter, reproducing what I saw. I wanted to capture what I felt, more like poetry in paint.

I quickly realized that all the rules, the two that I remembered and "no dribbling of paint" could be thrown out.
Painting is about fun, like cooking but no one has to eat it.
Most of my paintings are only saved to my computer.  They live a short life and I paint over them, sometimes six or seven paintings deep. They will be hard work for archivists of the future!
I do save a few, they are here and there in my shop, gathering metal dust and adding color.  There are two or three in my house although I am seriously considering painting over them and two or three have actually been sold!  Can you believe that?!  Actually hanging in someone else's house!  I feel like an intruder!
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