Sculpting With a Brush

November 26, 2011

Welcome to our new Quiller Gallery website. This is a dream come true for Marta and me. For the last few years we have received requests to have a secure on-line ordering site for our art supplies. Now you can order safely without picking up the phone. I have always wanted to add and remove paintings on the site myself. At this point I can manage the website from anywhere in the world as long as I have a wi-fi connection. For instance I can do a painting one day in the south of France and that evening write up the experience and place the painting on our site.

Today I will begin my monthly blog article. Please enjoy this writing and join me in witnessing the articles and the website develop. 

 

Sculpting With a Brush

 

These days I see myself almost as much a sculptor as a painter. Although I am working two dimensionally and in the various water media, I am removing as much paint as I put on. I put color on, then lift the color off that is around the positive form - or I paint a solid opaque negative shape around the form, and then work back and forth. In this way I am thinking and seeing the negative shape and much more aware of the abstracted composition.  In so doing I am also most aware of different ways to apply paint to create a feast of various visual qualities. I can create hard shapes, soft shapes, transparent glazed tones or juicy opaques. I am concerned with surface texture. 

Recently I have been working with aquabord, an Ampersand product. It is a textured kaoline clay that is laminated on a hardboard support. Using acrylic paint (Stephen Quiller Acrylic by Jack Richeson Co.) on this panel gives me a host of different possibilities for applying the paint. I can work transparent, translucent and opaque. I can glaze or work impasto. I can remove the paint when damp with a stiff, damp, clean brush. When dry I can lift with rubbing alcohol. And finally when the paint is dry I can carefully scrape the painted surface with pocket knife, razor blade or some such tool and take it back to a solid white. Then I can paint a transparent tone in this area or leave it as desired.  So I am constantly pushing and pulling the paint, adding and removing the paint- SCULPTING!

 

AWS Award Winner

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