miketaylor.ca

The workers in the hole that will one day host our new arts centre aren’t letting the weather slow things down at all. It’s still full speed ahead.

Sunday, November 25, 2008

For the last few weeks I’ve been playing around with palette (or painting) knives. I should have some results posted soon.

I’m really enjoying using them. It’s a huge change from the brushwork I’ve been doing. The applied paint seems to communicate a sense of urgency that I’ve been looking for. I’m also mixing in huge dollops of acrylic gel medium and getting some lovely transparencies that I’ve also been trying — unsuccessfully — to accomplish with brush alone. Surface texture is fun, too. I’m not totally sold on the gloss finish, but it certainly stands the colours up, so I think it’s liveable for now.

I’m not doing pretty work, though. Over the last couple of years my forms have slowly disintegrated as I explore playing with smaller and smaller (closer and closer?) relationships between forms and colours.

The colour is out of the slaughterhouse. There’s skin and blood and pain. There are decomposed horizons and putrid forests. It’s muddy in spots and shockingly sharp in others. Like watching the news …