It's all about processes and the more I've experimented the more I've learned that rules can be broken but the quality of the work is the most important and to never sacrifice or compromise.

I build my own canvases. The canvas in the thumbnail was stretched over 2 inch by 2 inch boards and supported the center with two 1 by 2's. If I didn't support the center what would happen when I stretched the canvas over and staple it the center of the canvas would bow inwards. The result of this is a quality surface and the canvas is stretched so tight that it sounds like a drum if you strike the surface with your thumb.

    * note to other artists building their own canvases. Keep the center support bars away from the surface of the backside of the canvas. This prevents the gesso you will apply and the paint once you get going to not react to the bars. What happens is that the back side of the canvas can't breathe properly. Click here to see an illustration.

I then use my gesso based media to create a new surface of the canvas. I like to build up enough of the media to cover the weave of the canvas fabric. The media gives me a surface that I enjoy painting on and expands my options with different textures. The media works like a cement when it is dry and because it is water based it dry's reasonably fast depending on how much of a build up there is and how hot the area that I'm working in is. See the illustration to the right.

 

An excellent example of process expansion would be the Relief galleries, 1 & 2. I began building up the canvas with a gesso based multimedia mix and then carving into it with an Exacto knife, sanding it down and then painting over the relief's.

In the early years of this textured process I kept the relief's only a quarter of an inch off the canvas. The Family is a good example. This was important to the development because I wanted to explore the quality of the multimedia mix and make sure it wasn't going to damage the canvas, flake or pop off, or have a reaction with the oil paint. 15 years of using this media and I've not had anything devastating happen.

To this date I have not run across any adverse effects with the experimentations and this has had a tremendous effect on my artistic growth. I've taken the multimedia and its properties to new levels.

I've been creating sculptured shapes with mat board and hot gluing them together. I've created sculptures with mat board, gluing them and then painting them. Take a look at the developing canvas started in December of 2005.

Then there is always math to deal with. You can't center objects without having to get out the tape measure and even taking it steps further. A great example of what i'm talking about is the process that I've written about on a painting that I named 4 Spheres. You can view the process of this painting and the weird materials I used to make this happen.

One of the most challenging pieces that I've ever created would be a piece I named Absolute Uncertainty. I used a three point perspective in this painting and had to actually build an apparatus and attach it to the wall of the studio I was working in. Take a look at the flash piece I developed to illustrate the process of this painting. In this case the development was all about the 3 point perspective. Another interesting point about this painting is that it isn't all just oil paint. I used a lot of pastel sticks and colored pencils. I sealed these media's to the canvas with hair spray so the art would not smudge.

Art supplies I use are anything I can get my hands on. I have used metal shavings and metal dust from the floor of hardware stores by the key grinder. I also scored on a very fine gold powder that i blow onto a surface that has been recently varnished so it sticks as well as not losing the reflective property of the gold. View an example here.

I experiment with many different materials. Many years ago I was given the art supplies of an artist who's name was Ann Daniels. It was a huge range of supplies that included brushes, oil paint and a lot of items I still don't know what they are for. A great example of these items would be the encaustic painting materials that I've had for years and never knew what the powdered paint was for. Take a look at the encaustic application I used on this sculpture.

I'm always experimenting with different sorts of materials and read a lot online about processes other people use. I learned a lot about processes when I was in college at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I enjoyed watching demonstrations and enjoyed some of the failures I experienced as well.

Safety first but if you aren't living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.