Sunday, July 15, 2007

Palimpsest(ic) deviation

Palimpsest; Housepaint on MDF; 48" X 48"

Sometimes you work on a painting for a month and it does not turn out the way it is supposed to. Recently I had an opportunity to experience this sinking emotion. I usually destroy work that I do not like, but this time I could not really fold up the canvas and throw it away as the painting was done on gessoed MDF (and a large one at that - 48" X 48").
I decided to throw a little bit of abstraction on top of the painting that I did not like. This way, I could escape from dumping a large block of MDF on the street and have a bit of fun splashing house paint all over it. The above picture was the result. The funny thing with house paint is that it settles and coalesces a bit on drying. Will be interesting to see this in a weeks time after all the coalescing and blotting is complete... I named it after reading Tree's post on roadways as a palimpsest(ic) surface.

6 comments:

Tree said...

I love it.

jafabrit said...

I'm with tree, I LOVE it.

Anonymous said...

This is fascinating. Especially how unlike a Pollock it is. You should give it to us on A&P!

Steppen Wolf said...

Tree and Jafabrit,
Thank you. Funny how I seem to get more of a reaction for paintings that lack any meaning or representation and that were done in under 10 minutes than for paintings done in a representational format that took about a month to complete. I am glad you enjoyed this one...

Steppen Wolf said...

Steve,
Glad you liked this one. I will post this and the effects of representation versus abstraction this week on A&P. I think the modren human is geared to see abstraction.

Hovawart said...

I don't have an invitation to read Tree's blog, so can you tell me how roadways are palimpsests? (I just learned this word last night on PBS' NOVA).