Alchemical Painting

My process/processes have developed from making pots. I'm finding that it's more like painting. Discovering, trying things, wondering, then getting to the point of jumping into the ocean. Go for it, all the while not knowing what it is.

I enjoy thinking about stains, the base elements from stars. They've found their way into my hands, the knowledge of how they work, to my brain + nervous system. These rocks will be here long after I pass this form. I want to think in their cosmic language. I want to communicate with the stars.

Calcium fluorine - Fluorspar

Sodium - Calcium Boron - Gerstley Borate

Vandium Pentoxide

Cobalt Carbonate - the gregarious and well known player; the visual paparazzi known as blue

Copper Carbonate - every clay artist's lover

Chrome Oxide - It helped us win wars. It went to college and moved to the suburbs and made a simple life, loving wife, 2 kids, they populated the world with more, 20th Century ideas, stuff to continue killin' the earth. (see how textile companies used it as a coloring agent to make color and super-fund sites)

The Iron Family - Comes in various forms, heavy handed. It courses through our veins. We know it when we scrape our knee and when we need a new heart...It sustains.

Rutile -  Dirty 1st cousin to iron. Another clay artist's close friend. we love that it creates milky clouds of another world. It is a container of worlds. Titanium dioxide and iron's love child. 

[Trouble Every Day - movie 2001 - Claire Denis]

[When terra sigillata goes on late in the drying process it does not adhere well and flakes off leaving a peeled-paint look]

The glaze finish plays a key role in teh final look of the color and abstract shapes. 

Dry - semi-matte - glossy-wet - activation or intermingled explosion between all three opens a new vision.

Forms and surfaces are created in separate spaces and liked across time. They become one forged in fire. The surfaces and forms become another layer to the overall meaning of a piece. The forms tell a languageless story. The piece "Fire" is just such a piece. Not only is it forms that tell a story in relationship to one another it also is a story of color, line/lines, forms, light, relationships and scale.

Modeled building and surface of the piece create tension that acts as a topographical map for the laying/layering of color. Glaze allows me to not only applycolor but to push and pull forms and shapes. 

Ideas moving forward would be to do abstract forms..and see how the forms interact, the conversation between paintings and sculpted narrative forms.