the litmus test

I have a test for any new media I decide to start using on a regular basis. I make an image of mountains. This isn't something I deliberately set out to do. It just crept up on me one day. I'll explain.

Eight years ago, I moved from Memphis to the mountains -- the Cumberland Plateau to be exact. I attended Sewanee (the University of the South), and the campus sits on a 10,000 acre plot of forested land in southern Tennessee. Sewanee is secluded and didn't even have reliable cell phone reception when I was there. The remoteness bothers some people. I fell in love. Until I went to Sewanee, the Milky Way was something I just read about in books. I loved trail running through the woods, hiking, sitting on the edge of the Plateau and watching the sun rise or set, and doing my reading for class on a large sandstone rock that overlooked the forest and was older than the dinosaurs. For the first time, I could look out a window and have a "view." I took classes in forestry and geology. I could identify all the rock layers making up the plateau and most of the trees that grew on top of it.

I think mountains are mind blowing and very humbling. I never get tired of looking at them.

A view of Morgan's Steep at Sewanee

Another view of Morgan's Steep.  This image is creeping away from reality, but I had a specific place in mind when I made it.

After college, I moved north to another remote town near the mountains. (Noticing a trend here?) This time I lived along the Susquehanna River in the upper ridges of the Appalachians. I had cell phone reception, but there were hitching posts at my stores to tie up a horse and buggy. Central Pennsylvania's remoteness was not entirely physical. There were pockets my new place that were remote from modernity. Welcome to Amish country. The mountains in the Susquehanna Valley looked familiar -- like 

Tennessee. They were different though and looked completely new when the snow came.

I was obsessed with the way leafless trees looked in the winter -- A sketch from Pennsylvania

When I came back to Tennessee, I settled within spitting distance of the Smokies. I live 15 minutes from the highest point in Knox County, and on a clear day when I drive down Central Avenue, there's a gay bar on my right, a bakery on my left, and miles of purply- blue mountains in the distance.

This watercolor was inspired by the very beginnings of a 5am winter sunrise in Knoxville.

This similar painting came later. Hand incised contour lines describe the rise and fall of the mountain peaks.

At some point in 8 years, the mountains have crawled into my psyche. I have painted and drawn them along the way, but at some point they stopped being specific mountains and just became an image of little bits and pieces of all the mountains, seasons, and times of day I've seen. Mountains have turned into a very sophisticated doodle. The nature of the medium dictates what season or weather seems to appear in the image. I do all of them from my imagination now, and I want each image to be as interesting as the real thing. When I can reach that equilibrium, I feel like I have a decent mastery of my new medium or idea I want to try out.

My first attempt at encaustic painting

More encaustic with dyed cheesecloth for texture.

Cheesecloth on wood. I pulled on the warp and weft strings of the loose weave to create those ridges

I got new Pitt pens a while back and took them for a walk...

i hate my painting

I had a realization last week. I hated the painting on my easel. It wasn't finished, but there was no way that would ever happen as long as I continued to ignore it.

Ignore the glare. I grabbed a quick shot before irreversible artistic impulses 

 I had shot a pretty good roll of film, and secured a show of recent photographs for September, BUT I was not painting. So. Last Saturday, I decided I would do something to this painting, because it couldn't possible get any worse. I had no plan, but I covered the oil painting completely with an extremely watered-down layer of cheap-o, white acrylic paint. Refusing to mix with the oil, this watery white beaded and puddled on top of the painting. I didn't know what it would look like when it dried, but I felt better.

Three years ago, I made this thing. 

You might consider it a painting. I don't. It's on canvas. It's got paint on it, but it's more of an experiment or a sketch. I made it, but didn't like the result. It kicked around my studio space, and enough other people reacted positively to it that I kept it and never painted over it. Recently I changed out the small paintings in my bedroom. When I first moved, I hung some tiny landscapes at the foot of my bed. Those got exchanged for some of my experimental oil sketches, including the thing.

When the white acrylic paint dried, I looked at the thing with fresh eyes. It's nothing special, just a rubber cement resist with black oil paint that varies in how thinned out it is. I went out to buy some rubber cement to see what it could do to this painting. This is what it looks like right now. It's still not done, but I'm a lot happier with the way it's turning out.