Strokes On Gold

1994, STROKES ON GOLD
30 x 24 acrylic, gold leaf/canvas

Yes, that's a powder room... our brand new half bath J built all by himself (well, I lent a hand, but it was mostly his doing from start to finish.) So, lucky me, a place to hang some old paintings that were gathering dust in the basement. This is good news because g-kid pics are beginning to take over prime wall space around the place! It's also nice to have a rest stop near the kitchen end of the house.

There were two "Strokes" paintings, one sold and the other suffered a nasty scratch along the bottom. I touched it up and it will never be saleable again, but works very well in this space. The technique was one adapted from studies of two painters I was very attracted to at the time, Mark Tobey and Robert Ryman. Neither artist would see a relationship, but their minimalist patterns made me want to find my own handwriting and fill a canvas with it. This piece, an oil, has a red base over most of the canvas, but gold leaf across a top band of about 8 inches. The strokes were woven of varying shades of white to taupe, leaving the background to show through. I also scribbled a contrasting scratch in and out of the network. I enjoyed the process as well as the result... don't know why I didn't do more.