FINALLY

• October 30th, 2004 • • painting, supplies •

This evening was a most productive one.

From Michael’s mother’s studio, I recieved six 8″x10″ canvases that have been doing nothing but collecting dust. Previously in the week I prepared the surfaces of five of them (the sixth was involved in an accident which pierced its surface, thus I will paint something else on it). The surface prep consisted of a very very oily mixture of zinc white and boiled linseed oil from the hardware store.

There has always been much tongue clicking from people who insist on using art store linseed oil: the seven-buck-for-4-ounce bottle kind. Two notes on hardware store boiled linseed oil — one, it is yellow and yellows even more over time, and two it comes in large quantities for not much money. I use a LARGE amound of oil in my work. At times my paintings take a week or two to dry because of the oil, not to mention the humidity. Art store linseed oil is simply not practical!

Linseed oil rants aside, the five canvases did indeed take over a week to dry to the touch, though thicker chunks of paint were quite wet. In about an hour this evening, the five evolved into a multi-paneled work I am entitling Planet. While I was very pleased with the results, it will most-likely take at least three weeks before I will be able to make the final judgement call on whether or not Planet is indeed finished.

The sixth panel with its canvas wound evolved into something completely different. For the first time, I combined screws and canvas. This piece is nameless and thus will probably not be finished for a while.

Moving back toward my more comfortable medium of wood screws and plywood, I did a “sketch” for another project which involves used computer parts. This nonsense has been ruminating in the back of my head for several years now and has finally surfaced. Family and friends are being called upon so that I may relieve them of old/non-working computers to get parts for the project. HOPEfully the computer part project will reach a climax rather than sink back into the depths of my scattered brain.

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