An Exploration of Bark

12 in x 12 in

07/2020

This painting was my first attempt at impasto – putting texture into the paint. It actually grew out of a mistake - I applied tape over the bright silver to make crisp edges for the next column, but before I removed the tape before the silver was fully dry, and doing so tore huge chunks of the silver away from the canvas. Initially horrified, I took a second look and realized that it had left an interesting pattern, so I played around with other textures and thought about tree bark when I kept going. I can’t say that deliberately ripping off still moist paint from the canvas has become something I do regularly, but it taught me a lot about how different colors dry at different times, and that the metallic dry more slowly for some reason.