Painting with Acid

 It is late afternoon and I am listening to Beethoven.  The gardens are watered, and though they are filled with weeds and gopher holes, there is promise in them.

I have been working for the last three weeks on totally new art.  I am painting with acid on steel canvases.  A painting, for me, is more like a novel while my sculptures are like poetry–lyrical and immediate.  In my paintings, the narrative is slower, more layered.     

I have yet to aquire the skills to work competently in paints.  Patina acids are a different story.  I have years of experience with them.  I know how they will react with each other, the colors they produce cold and hot, how to layer, blend, and achieve a surface at once smooth and full of depth. 

So I’ve been playing, enhancing the patinas with paint where necessary and learning how to create a desired finish.  My studio is sticky, toxic and totally mesmerizing.  I have found myself spending hours looking at these pieces, taking them in and getting lost.

Ideas for sculptures are stacking up, gestating while I learn these new techniques and break myself of my own habits.  My vocabulary is growing and I am like my gardens– full of weeds and gopher holes, and the promise of new life.