snapshot of work in progress (1)

One of the side benefits of participating in Hwy 62 Open Studio Art Tours is the clearing and reorganizing of the studio in preparation for scores of visitors tramping through. When they’re gone and it’s all over, I have a neat, fresh, newly decluttered studio to play in. And I am back at it, people! The studio is humming!

As I groomed the space this time I snagged a number of unresolved canvases and panels that had been sitting around taking up room, either terminally incomplete or just not satisfactory in one way or another. I had determined that I was going to either discard them or remake them into something I like better. I’ve been looking forward to taking the metaphorical hatchet to them, and over the last number of weeks when I couldn’t do any new work in the studio I’d grown increasingly impatient to get at it.

The designated discards include a small stack of 8×10-inch wood panels that I had painted back in 2019 and had “finished” but with which I never really was happy. Now in reworking them I’m experimenting with a few approaches, but what I find myself particularly drawn to is collaging with some early prints from my small (5×7-in) gel press. These prints were experiments on cheap paper or sometimes what are called “pick-up” sheets, used to pull waste paint or ghost prints off the press. Anyway, they can’t stand on their own for various reasons, but they are perfectly adequate for collage. So I’ve found myself attracted to using these prints with the small wood panels.

I’m already detecting a kind of theme running through my experiments, which I’m not really ready to talk about yet. The snapshots on this page are of play versions I am not using but thought I’d share anyway, so you could see what universe I’m working with now that I’m back. Here’s another one:

snapshot of work in progress (2)

And one more – portrait format this time:

snapshot of work in progress (3)

It was good (as always) to get the rupture in my routine and my trajectory provided by my participation in Art Tours. I’m bursting with ideas and ready for new directions. And now there’s plenty of room in the studio to work on them!

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