Technique
The majority of my work is created using acrylic paint on canvas. This is a medium that allows me a great deal of versatility. First and foremost, it allows me to paint impasto (i.e. with texture), which is a natural extension of my creative energy. The process for me seems to be about building a painting. To obtain the heavy impasto in my work I mix the paint with a variety of acrylic gel mediums. These gels come in varying viscosity’s and are essentially an inert acrylic polymer, or simply put – paint without pigment. Using these gels not only allows me to thicken the paint considerably, allowing me to create a tactile texture of peaks and valleys, it also gives me twice the amount of paint to play with.
Pastel Paste
Pastel paste is my own paint formula. When I first started to experiment with different media soft pastels became a favorite. I became very much intrigued by the pastel paintings by the French impressionist, Edgar Degas. Some of Degas’ pastels are simply mesmerizing. Apparently, he was able to formulate a fixative, or binder, where he could layer the pastel, building color upon color, without altering the underlying layer. To put this achievement into perspective you have to think about layering chalk, which is basically the same as soft pastel. You cannot layer chalk because it will smear and if you use a fixative the under-layer is altered and loses its natural characteristics. So somewhere between experimenting with fixative formulas and trying to make my own pastels, I came up with my own formula where I mix raw pigment with a binder and a preservative. The result is a thick wet pastel paste that I apply onto canvas mounted on wood. This pastel paste is somewhat difficult to work with as the tonal values change fairly dramatically from wet to dry. One of my initial concerns with this medium was would this pastel paste remain stable or would it become fugitive and flake away. Thankfully my first pastel paintings made in the early 1990’s still look exactly as they did when I first painted them.