Brush study and percussion drawing transferred from it.
Studio with brush studies and related percussion drawings.
Studio with brush studies and related percussion drawings.
Conga sounds brush studies and related drawings.
Big studies on studio floor.
#07/#08 Base layers in progress.
#07/#08/#09 In progress. Vellum layers drawn and collaged, clamped over painted base layers.
#10/#08/#07 Full layers drawn, collaged, painted with oils, clamped together.
Jazz Cubano #07 completed.
Jazz Cubano #08 completed.
#12/#25/#27/#20 Layers complete, taped together.
Brushes and tools used for brush drawings.
Jazz Cubano Process Photos
Steps in my standard working process:
1. Select a jazz composition I can work and “live” with for one to two years. Choosing music is an ongoing quest for me. All artistic decisions in a series are made with the music on – composition, color, where to collage, where to cut.
2. Request the score from the composer and study it carefully. Find several recordings of the piece if possible, and attend one or more live performances.
3. My materials: heavy watercolor paper, translucent tracing vellum, oil paint, flashe, gouache, pencil and a glue – now archival PVA, previously MSA gel. (All archival.) The translucent papers and oil paint allow one to see, quite literally, a painting through a painting.
4. I paint groups of abstract-expressionist brush studies to capture the sounds, rhythms and movement of the jazz composition. These images become the vocabulary for that series of paintings. With the Venezuelan Suite, there were roughly 80. With Jazz Cubano, there were about 40 percussion studies 36” square, as well as full size 42” studies.
5. Composing the layered paintings is, for me, more like choreographing – choosing images and setting them into dynamic relationships. I try to capture a sense of physical movement – gravity, weight, balance, extension, momentum.
6. Next I re-draw the images in the brush studies, tracing and transferring them onto fresh sheets of vellum and watercolor paper. The watercolor paper forms the opaque, stable back layer of each picture, and two sheets of tracing vellum the translucent layers in front.
I work on several paintings at once. They influence each other and give me new ideas.
7. Starting with the back layer and working forward, I paint into all the layers, hanging them in front of each other periodically to check their activity, deciding where to reinforce forms with collage pieces attached in front or behind.
Color is critical and always dynamic. In my work color establishes the position of forms in space and controls the speed and character of movement. I use black and white as colors.
Each layer must have compositional integrity, or the space is unconvincing when I pile them up. Color on individual layers is quite restricted. The range of color and value in a painting only becomes full when I pile the layers up. The layers push on each other visually, helping to create the space in the painting.
Up to this point my process is additive. I try to make sure I have all the building blocks in place, balanced and loaded with potential energy.
8. The subtractive process begins when all layers are painted, constructed, and hung in place over each other. Superfluous sections of the tracing vellum are cut away to reveal colors and forms behind, making them jump forward or back visually, exert new pressures, change direction. This is when I try to set the energy of the whole picture in motion.
9. Finally I spot-glue the layers in place, weighting them down while they dry. Last, I trim the edges.