Surfaces

I've been working on a series of panels the last few months. I originally got the idea from looking at some work by Alan Leitner, a Hawaii artist who does large abstracts that have these amazing surfaces. Then, as I have written about before, I got interested in the work of Gerhard Richter, whose abstracts are constructed layer by layer by layer. So I started working on plywood panels, a foot and a half to two foot square, with the idea of just trying to explore surfaces and layers and textures. I had seen Scottie Flamm, another Hawaii artist, working on a painting at the Bethel Street Gallery one day, using color worked into a thick medium that turned out to be Venetian Plaster. So I got myself a gallon of that and began using it with serrated putty knives to create underlayments that I could then go back over with layers of color of various degrees of transparency. Yesterday I spent a couple hours mounting the panels on bracing made of square hardwood dowels. Now instead of feeling tentative and flimsy they look and feel more solid. Here's four from the current sequence: