New Territory: Sloppy Painting and Screen Prints

4/4/2013

To embody your work, you must resemble it.

When I painted realism, rarely did I get a daub of paint on me. I'd wear work clothes into the studio, and on a rare occasion, ruin a good shirt.

Painting these city abstracts for my upcoming show, "Populace," requires a more expressive, free-style approach with the brush. I'm now standing rather than sitting, the music is even louder and the brushes are bigger with globs of paint. I ruined my way, one shirt, one pair of pants at a time, to two full outfits, each spotted with different colors of paint. I guess it's my spring collection. While my clothes get messy, the color and compositions of my paintings become more expressive and unpredictable. My work and my wardrobe seem to represent each other's evolution.

My recent work has led me to look at my creative process in a new light, and to become more expressive and trust my artistic judgment. I like to challenge myself when creating a new body of work, and for this show, I decided to take on a new medium. I created a series of works on paper using the screen-printing process.

I used silk-screens to print random shapes into color compositions, on which I added ink drawings. This isn't the traditional application of screen printing, but rather a painter's version of it. On some of the prints, such as "Polis No. 1," I screen-printed up to 24 individual colors and shapes over several sessions in the studio.

Studio Two Three, a community print shop for artists and students, became my home for a month. Ashley, the director, and a community of interns and artists showed me the ropes and made me feel welcome, not to mention old as hell. I've been painting alone in my studio (shed) for years, so this was an unforeseen highlight to be around creators in this great studio space.

A couple weeks ago, I stopped by Kroger on the way home from an evening at Studio Two Three, and the cashier thought I was a house painter — affirmation that I was doing something right.