Painting on Ice

   Painting, I know, is an attempt at immortality.  We want to leave something behind stronger than the last breath we take.  We tell stories and share who we are that way but art offers an intermingling of our souls.

I create a piece, some kind of art, and a million ideas run through my head in the process until finally my hands interpret what was in my heart.

   I work with steel and copper when I can find it.  I like their strength, the weight of the piece and with proper attendance, how they can float.  I am often asked, "will it rust?"  As though you are anticipating disappointment from the beginning!

   When I pour concrete the only guarantees I make are that it will be hard.  It will be gray.  It will not burn and no one will steal it.

   Art will age.  Steel will rust.  It is the only quote in the Bible I know.  Concrete will crack.

   I often wonder what is lost in the original when ancient artwork is restored?  The painting could still be pretty but it seems to me, muffled a bit, a covering over the soul.  Some lost artwork can only be identified by fingerprints left behind by the artist.

   I wonder which is critical?  Did the artist really touch that painting?  Or does the painting really touch you?

 copper/stainless steel/copper
58" x 14"

   In either way it is only around for awhile.  It is a shout down a darkened alley.  It could be a moon lit masterpiece but will change with the raising sun.  It is like painting on ice.

 One of eight butterflies

Eight butterflies in flight.  Oil paint over stainless steel.  Copper and stainless steel panels framed in steel, powder coated clear coat.  Lots of fingerprints and no doubt some DNA.  I never work with gloves.

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Is it Real or is it Memorex?

What constitutes a "real painting"?  Does it have to be oil on canvas, framed and matted, suitable for an art gallery?  Does it have to have lasting qualities?  Most of my paintings only exist in this computer and sometimes I wonder what they do in that world by themselves?  I paint when I feel like painting and have been known to paint on just about anything.  I take photographs along the way and it is only these that get preserved, their life limited to the digital world.  Oh, once in a while I may keep one.  I have four hanging in my house, two in my shop gathering steel dust, I have given some away and actually sold two!  But most live a short life, getting painted on top of each other, turned into something else or just plain crumpled up and tossed!

 an Experiment on tin foil

   One of my favorite things to paint on is tin foil, that kitchen foil we use to wrap up food!  That is almost as temporary as painting on ice!  I don't particularly like the canvas texture that is present with "professional" paintings.  I find that surface gets in my way of what I am trying to do.  I like how paint reacts and stays on the surface of the tin foil, alive and mixing, intermingling, swimming on top.  Easy to get depth and shadows.

 Color on Tin Foil

   They don't last of course, except in my computer, but they are fun to do.

 Ocean Waves on tin foil

Last Christmas I wrapped my gifts in tin foil that I had painted, temporary I know, but pretty and fun for the moment.

I wonder if you could paint the ocean from description? Never having seen it or heard its roar? Smelled it or tasted salt water?
More tin foil art and other stuff is HERE

Pick a number, any number...

I paint on just about anything except canvas. I don't have any canvas. My shop is a metal shop and my first choice would be copper. I love what paint does on metal. It is not absorbed, won't stay where you put it and has a will of its own. It wants to become something. When I run out of copper sheets my next choice would be stainless steel. It never rusts allowing me to put the paintings outside and it has a sheen of its own adding an element to the painting.

This time of year I like to paint on kitchen foil, what this "3"

is painted on. The depth is in the material already and I use these paintings to wrap my Christmas presents. Yeah, if you unwrap a present properly with a bit of eagerness the paint will flake off. It is still a pretty package under the tree.

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Muse?

I have lost that Drive to create art and am not sure if or how I will get it back again, or what form it will take. I wonder what "Art" is, why it drove me before to create the physical out of

dreams and visions that I have had. I still have dreams but now they are swirling dervishes of language and I am dreaming in color. I don't know where to take this or whether it will go anywhere, but it is a bit like the steel, lumps of iron in my shop, wanting the heat from the fire, pounded on my forge until they become what was always within them. Art.

Maybe it is the economy. There is no excess money to purchase what I make and without sales I can't continue. Maybe it is the neuropathy in my hands. Everything I touch is like stirring a bucket full of cut glass. The steel does call for me but only offers pain.

I always start my tomato seeds in the greenhouse on April Fools Day and my garden is always my best art, creating a total environment that is really me, an island, my island in this narcissistic world we live in. That is four months from now. Plenty of time.

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My Art is Temporary...

even what I make from steel will suffer the passage of time and succumb to the elements, rusting into the earth from which I found it. Like ice sculptures they will exist in memory only and then become a dream extinguished by the morning glare. I know that. It is an artists' futile attempt at immortality, creating something larger than life. Leaving behind traces in the sand to say "I was there"! I saw it and loved it even if I didn't understand it all.

My acrylic art is even shorter lived as I make no pretence of saving it at all. My paintings are photographed and transformed into the digital world of cyber space. I don't know what happens to them, looked at by others, maybe copied like stolen kisses, or glanced at and forgotten. They are lost loves into a nether world, out of reach and out of control or persuasion.

I keep them or copies of them like love letters in a box. They become a part of my diary.

They are experiences not captureable, a flicker in time. Sometimes I look back on them with amazement, astonished at how close I came. Other times I realize I have a long way to go. And all the time, pleased with myself for keeping a record, never timid, always shouting: "I was here and I did that!"

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