September 14, 2013
A question from a visitor to my website about the paper I favor for my pastel paintings – made me wonder why I am drawn to Wallis paper and how different my work might be on different papers.
I have a several “series” that I am working with concurrently that have grown out of the serendipities of the different moods in recent plein air paintings done overseas. One of these is a series treating the obscuring and revealing properties of mist and landscape.
My regular morning walk ( yesterday) in San Diego, on the edge of town was distinguished by a fairly thick shroud of morning mist, so I made some notes.
On my return home I decided to do some quick studies of the images I had seen – but for the first time, using a velour paper that I have had in the drawer for a while. Mindful of the reduction of saturated color, flattening dimensions into planes, curtains of tonal washes, I was fairly pleased with the whispered softness of the process. A case of the “medium is the message”.
But today I looked at the pieces as feeling a little foreign to my interest in the variety of marks possible and so went back to my favorite paper (Wallis) and my tougher mark and energy for another study of cloud and smoke – which I may publish tomorrow – if all goes well on this bright, hot, sunny day!
