My apologies for the mediocre photo, I left my equipment in Baltimore over the Christmas holiday and was forced to use my iPhone.
Happy New Year. If you get wasted, hope its a good time.
Tom Bennett
Injected Meaning, monotype reintroduced with oil paint, on Rives BFK paper, 24″ x 18″
When taking monotypes and working back into them with other media, I intend to allow the under-print to be an integral part of the process and have a dialogue with the fresh mark making. With this piece I fear I have pushed to far with the paint and the literal form. The most overt area revealing the print is the space on the right with amorphous cell-like blobs. That said, I like the spotty abstracted relationships and may accept this as sort of a red-headed step child, even though she’s a brunette.
Tom Bennett
Nice and Easy, oil on monotype, rives bfk paper, 20″ x 16″
so … i’m in the studio today and will be packing up some supplies to take with me for the holiday break. i’ll be in the southern vermont area with very limited internet service so I’ll likely pass on next monday’s post. in the meantime, i’m thinking about my practice and how i’m moving away from photography and how it feels. if one has spent 30+ years in one discipline, how do you move through the discomfort of transition?
A monotype currently being revisited. Something about this makes me think of, remember fondly, my experiences in Turkey. I can’t tell you why.
WIP: Konja, 2003-2011, oil paint over oil based monotype on paper, 24″ x 18″
messing around with watercolors today
The last week and a half has been a blur of illness and commercial work. I have nothing new finished to post. So here’s an older monotype from the archives.
Deep South, 2009, monotype, 18″ x 12″
Private collection
Happy Thanksgiving.
Age Before Beauty, 1993-2011, oil study into monotype on paper. 20″ x 16″
i’ve been working with the monotype as a means for creative development and i’m finding the process to be a great way to both have fun AND mine some deeper ideas. i’m not a trained printmaker and my forays into the plastic arts in college were abysmal. yet, this time, i’m finding a real draw to printmaking in particular. i can only guess it’s my inner finger painting child screaming for more attention … yet, it might be a bit more. my drive to pick up my camera has dropped to all time lows and i spend more time drawing and playing with paints and papers than ever before. additionally, i find little interest in looking a contemporary photography. it all seems so contrived and well .. i dunno. i’m sure to find my way back sometime.
so… while i’ve samples of this new direction, they’re all at my studio and i’ve not had a moment to foto them for this entry ( i know … what a loser) i’ll be sure to post some soon
in the meantime …. this is a detail of an ink scroll 4″ x 48″
Leafing through the archives of not-quite successful prints, I came across a good candidate. I didn’t document it in its original stage, as I haven’t really done for most of the pieces in this series, but suppose I should. I will, however, search for a slide of it, which I am almost positive I have catalogued somewhere in the cave I call my studio.
I’m not isolating the printmaking paper with hide glue or gesso or anything. It should last at least until a meteor hits the earth, destroying civilization as we know it.
Hedwigs’s Spread Spectrum, oil over monotype on paper, 20″ x 16″
I’m writing this on the 2 V’s, vicodin and vodka, as I try to recover from a kick-arse flu.
This is an oil painting on paper.
Anachronism, oil paint over printmaking ink on paper, 20″ x 16″
oil into monotype on paper
30″ x 20″
Available for sale
i’ve been able to spend a fair amount of time in the studio this past week and what has been organically emerging is a distinct move towards other ways of expressing myself besides photography. while making images using light (the camera) will always form the foundation of HOW i see, how i EXPRESS what i see is shifting. the fun of exploring block printing with my “networks we love” series or my obsessively relaxing dots using sumi ink of japanese rice paper …these activities seem to provide a much needed re-jiggering to my studio practice. now, WHERE this is going is unimportant. i decided that the “studio practice” is what i’ll focus on instead of the hustle to show, however, the need to have a direction will emerge. WHEN … i don’t know, and HOW this will take shape … i have not the faintest idea. all i know is … i keep making dots, printing words using inks on paper wondering wtf it’s all about.
below is the 7th in the series “networks we love” a collection of wifi networks names gathered from my travels and from asking twitter, google+ and facebook connections. block prints : image is 4×6 printed on 9×12″rice paper. edition 5
Silvermine Art Center in New Canaan, CT is organizing a fundraising event it has hosted for 10 years now, Signed, Sealed and Delivered. It’s an art sale and auction designed for collectors and art lovers featuring over 500 small, 4″ x 6″ original works in all media for sale at $50 each, to benefit the Center’s programs and outreach.
I’m contributing these 3 tiny paintings, all oil over monotype on Rives BFK printmaking paper. I rarely, if ever, paint this small with oil and I find it to be a disciplined exercise in control and direct manipulation of materials and form. Hellzalotta of fun.
Tom
SSD 1, oil on monotype on paper, 6″ x 4″
SSD 2, oil on monotype on paper, 6″ x 4″
SSD 3, oil on monotype on paper, 4″ x 6″
This was an very old, unresolved monotype I’m painting back into and as it’s developed, I realized that a bit of my father’s design sensibility had creeped in; the Dante series to be specific. I’m not quite sure about the lower portion with abstracted stalagmite ink streaks. I wanted to have an area to strike a tense balance down there. What do you think?
A Bow to Purgatory, oil over monotype on Rives BFK paper, 24″ x 18″
detail
Below is a painting on monotype from last week.
The queen in the Afternoon, oil on monotype on paper, 20″ x 16″
I’m continuing the exercise of painting over monotypes and I’m just exploring the application and reaction of the oil on printmaking paper. The paper is a medium to heavy weight Stonehenge brand and absorbs the oil paint and turps relatively quickly; the opposite of the method used in making the monotypes, since with the monos its about oil based paint and ink applied to plexiglass: no tooth nor absorption but simply a resistant glassy surface that the paint glides over. With painting directly on the paper, its about discovering the various lengths of time different paint films and colors tack up and how they interact with paint layers placed over them. I’m allowing and developing loose abstracted form with these early stages. Technically these could be called either paintings or monotypes, but you can call them anything you want. If it’s a four-letter word, I don’t really need to know about it.
Pigeon is old slang for a young woman, back when men were men and misogynist was a 10-letter word.
T.B.
Old Ruling Class Revise, oil on monotype on paper, 20″ x 16″
The original monotype:
there are many formal aspects of the print that I really like and have been changed and obliterated. Ah well. You must destroy to create to destroy again.
I’m in Cape Cod this week and kind of stuck without proper art-making materials as I work fixing up a beach shack. I’m lying here while a chicken is cooking in the kitchen and the smells waft into my flared nostrils. I’m hungry and you’ll just have to deal with this older monotype from the pompously named “archives”.
Tastes Like Chicken (formally titled Untitled Figure #2), monotype, 14″ x 9″
What I wrote before still applies to these. In fact these were actually assembles prior to the pieces in that post and looking at them now, there’s more that I like in this batch. A few of these have some issues where the bottom layer is wavy, or some of the layers got rubbed raw in the gluing process and that’s made me ambivalent toward them, but this morning I was pleasantly surprised.
I’m also very tired. Last night I had a dream that was such a Matrix rip-off I found myself thinking in-dream “Not another Matrix rip-off!”
More after the leap. Read more »
Another reworked monotype. I was thinking about Frank Auerbach, the great british figurative expressionist. He’s one of the painters floating in the back of my head; his aggressive paint-slathering is of such a unique character it has hammered itself there into my sub-brain. My application isn’t mimicking his nor is it close, it’s the attitude he has with working and reworking this viscous medium until it practically destroys the surface and has to be scrapped down and rebuilt all over again. I’m having a great deal of fun exploring and tripping along with these old prints I made back at Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking workshop in Manhattan.
A Nod to Frank, 1993-2011, oil paint on monotype on paper, 24″ x18″
I’m continuing to take old and not particularly successful monotypes and reworking them with oil paint. It’s not quite working here perhaps because I haven’t resolved the relationship of the figure and its treatment with the breaking up of the picture plane. The shapes are not jiving, but I do like the figure.
Extended right, oil paint on monotype on paper, 1992-2011
well, this past week was full one …the first part spent visiting my new studio (i receive keys sept.1) and chatting with studio mate as to how we were going to build some wall stuff. the second part of the week i worked for money (thankfully) and the weekend was spent preparing for the storm. this entailed a day trip to vermont to put stuff in the barn and talking with neighbors up there about the impending potential disaster. vermont has been hit badly with flooding recently and irene could potentially be disastrous for many folks up there. mama nature has a mind of her own. * update: vermont was hit hard. many towns under water lots of devastation and a couple of deaths. irene took a path unexpected and left destruction in her wake.
i did, however, buy some art supplies to start lino cut printing. it’s such a basic form of the print, that exploring it is relatively easy. i’m anticipating having some samples for next weeks post. for now, here’s a picture of the current state of my desk along with the new supplies. be well
Agora Gallery - the proud sponsor of the Chelsea International Fine Art Competition, which offers contemporary artists the opportunity to show their original art at one the most acclaimed juried art shows in Chelsea, New York’s art galleries district.
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