Hello, bloggers!

I’ve been doing, over the last three or four months, some unusual integration between paper and canvas and gesso and concrete.

Somebody gave me rolls and rolls of colored aluminum paper, like wrapping paper.  Then I had a big roll of canvas that I found, which I hadn’t done anything with, so I had them stretched into five-by-six-foot canvases...

Then I pasted this paper on after wrinkling it up, and threw all kinds of different concrete on to make my dip.  I had found some old cans of black paint and some really great silver paint.

I did a splatter and then spun them and left them on racks for 3 months while I was in Ireland.

When I came back, they were dry.  I started reading the spirits in them.  There are probably 40 or 50 of them.

That’s what I did before I left for Nashville:  more experimentation with different papers.. and I really enjoyed the integration of paper into the melange...

It got all crinkly and created all different kinds of manifestations.

To my way of thinking, everything in painting is trompe l’oeil.  It’s all about how the light reflects.  This particular technique would remind you of broken ice.

I’ve been discovering paper for a long time.  Now, to have the paper and the canvas together as one, is like adding another musician to my orchestra.

It’s been a lot of fun...  As you can tell, it doesn’t take much to intrigue me!

Matt