The techniques I developed for my “Mapping Forty” drawing series are now evolving into a more painterly approach, suitable for works on canvas. The four paintings in this post are transitional works. They are all acrylic on paper, about 12x9 inches in size.
As I move from drawing to painting, I am mostly concerned with creating the right background for my linear elements. I was helped in envisioning this by fortuitous circumstance, in the form of the “Color as Field” exhibition at the Frist Center for Visual Arts in Nashville. I visited this show in late June. There was good synchronicity in seeing this show at that time. Back in 1998 when I was making the paintings that were precursors to “Mapping Forty”, I was heavily influenced by a retrospective of the Washington Color School artists. These artists included color field painters, some of whom are represented in the Frist show.
With inspiration gathered from this show, I have decided to stain the backgrounds of these paintings. This approach creates subtle shifting veils of color that set up the interactions of the linear elements. In these first works I stained the acrylics into paper. Upcoming works will use raw canvas as the support.




