Manipulating Paint and Form

Martin Young (2023) *Assemblage 1: Object Lesson*. [Pastel, charcoal, acrylic paint, dry artist pigments, cardboard, wooden frame, acrylic sheeting, burlap, pine wood, masonite and packing tape] 60 x 60 cm.

During the winter, I had purchased an artwork from an overseas artist in Spain. The couriers, and customs, did not treat this work with respect, and it came to me in a shocking state. The frame was shattered, its pieces pouring out of the envelope. The painting itself was broken, like someone had hit the package with a baseball bat.

I learned a lot, through this experience, about art restoration, and working together with an artist to file an insurance claim. Happily the artwork was able to be restored, and although it can never be the same, the damage is now almost invisible.

Following this, I purchased another work from the same artist, and it came in a heavy wooden box. No baseball bats allowed.

This, along with the exercises in this section, inspired this work. The pastel and charcoal drawings are from my weekly life drawing sessions. The frame, acrylic sheet, and wooden box are the remnants of the episode.

All in all, an object lesson, if you will. Parallel to this, I’m reading Kenneth Clark’s The Nude. This reminds me that I can extend my object lesson metaphor to the subject of the drawings themselves, as they become objectified.

Martin Young (2022) *Assemblage 2: Mycelial Abstraction*. [Recycled paper, cotton fibers, banana fibers, dry pigments] 22.8cm x 28.9cm.

Leveraging my paper making kit, I decided to create another assemblage. I decided to drop ultramarine, anthroquinone and mars red dry pigments onto the slurry, roughly like ‘ground’ and ‘sky’. Using discarded warp threads from my mother’s loom, and some banana fiber given to me by one of my mother’s friends, I was creating some organic ‘plant’ forms.

I quite like this outcome, though it is incredibly fragile. I didn’t get quite the right mix of cotton to paper fiber, so the result is quite crumbly. I’m going to spritz it with some gum arabic or methylcellulose to help stabilize it and hold it together.

Reflection
Research
- Paint Application
- Action Painting
Projects
- Applying Paint
  - Further Crackle experiments
- Mixing Materials into Paint
- Towards Abstraction
Supplementary Materials
- Student Collaboration Round 3
- Bibliography

Reflection

Take-aways for Project

Bonding newspaper as a surface or material to work with resonates with me. Taking this forward.
Using rags to paint with removed the ‘stiffness’ I feel when using brushes. Taking this forward.
Combining objects into the painting, directly, has interesting possibilities. How can I use found objects/other detritus, to add narrative or reinforce my theme?
Other types of mark making? printing? There is something here to explore
I’m starting to ‘understand’ acrylic

Other notes

I’ve catalogued my work for all three projects here. I found myself cycling between exercises, and it just made more sense to me to work this way. You’ll see some overlap between the exercises, due to this, as I tried something from a later exercise back in an earlier one.
I worked quickly in this section. I had a stack of very cheap, and generally poor quality, small canvases that I’d picked up somewhere. These made great surfaces to try things out on without getting stuck on ‘wasting’ the materials.
I worked primarily with acrylic here, but got quite focused in the possibilities that came up from combining mediums and materials. There is a lot of room to move here.
Impasto:
- cold wax over coloured acrylic background gave some interesting effects. I was thinking of my tutor’s feedback on my prior assignment and how I could have approached the sky differently to bring more dynamism. This exercise became a small exploration of different outcomes.
Mixing Media:
- Seeing different artists work at a recent show (see Paint Application research) got me thinking about newsprint, and metallic effects. I’m not sure if I was supposed to create a finished piece here, but these quick experiments gave me a wealth of ideas that I took forward into the final project
- Bonding newsprint to aluminum foil gave some really hard geometric texture. I quite like the possibility here.
- I don’t think I’m going to disassemble a pair of jeans ever again. But at least now I have a pile of old denim, and rivets to play with.
- Threads pull thinned acrylic along their length. I’m not sure what I could use this for, specifically, but I really quite like the effect. Method reminds me a bit of Dionne Simpson’s work (see Paint Application)
- The commercial “Dry media” ground gives me lots of ideas. It doesn’t work the same look as paper, but I like the way the charcoal adheres to it. I could see using this more broadly.