more garbage

mt. refuse reflection.  oil and tin on panel.  36" x 48"

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the paint surface evolved in my series of landfill paintings (see previous postings) to the point where paint alone was not sufficient to create the texture i was seeking.  i had been putting the paint on with increasingly thicker and thicker daubs,  applying it with extreme gusto,  brushes laden with pigment and smears inundated with buttery color. but the textured surface that i was achieving still wasn't communicating something...my quest was not fulfilled...it wasn't the right kind of surface.  after experimenting with other materials added to the paint to increase it's impasto - sawdust, modeling paste, wax - i decided to hammer on pieces of old tin pie plates that i had used as palettes and crunched up empty tin paint tubes - stuff that was lying around the studio....essentially, pieces of garbage. now i felt i was making headway,  felt this was a breakthrough. rather than painting a picture of a landfill, my painting was a landfill. i painted on this surface of junk and loved it...found it to yield a unique way of making a mark, a brush stroke,  a unique, idiosyncratic way of making an image.  it was what i was after.  i took off in this new direction,  began hammering on pieces of tin palette pie plates and empty paint tubes day and night, was filled with such a renewed sense of exploration into the unknown that i found my imagination to be filled with so much potential imagery that i couldn't sleep.  however, these paintings are very robust and are demanding in a physical way and they took a toll on me...after working on them for a month solid and making about 6 paintings, i was forced to take a breather to allow my shoulder and elbow and lower back to recover from all of the lifting and lugging,  hammering and cutting,  sawing,  scraping and painting.

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