I went on a bit of a painting binge last month. The result was a lot of used masking tape. Usually I use the tape to get simple line patterns like this:
But this time I also used the odds and ends to make patchwork stuff like the pieces below. I generally like the effect. These will end up collaged into some quilt some day.
More after the jump. Read more »
Unless you’ve been having a pedicure under a rock the last few days, you’ll know the football NY Giants beat the NE Patriots to win the superbowl for the 2nd time in 4 years. Without going into an analysis of the season and the game itself and bore most of you, I’ll just say, as a New Yorker, this team is cardiac-arrest-fun with its habit of coming back from the dead and pulling out a win at the last minute.
Mario Manningham came up with, arguably perhaps, the game-changing catch along the sideline. The play was expressionist in its execution.
Tom Bennett
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Manningham, monotype, 20′ x 16″
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Still very much work, still very much in progress.
These will not be paired with “Ends.”
-JD
More paintings made from monotypes. These two pieces I finished a couple of days ago and I’m of two minds about them. The first, In the Corner, may be a tad too defined in the figure. I’m not sure I’m pushing the abstraction enough. The second painting I’m on the fence about as well. How’s that for mixed metaphor cliches?
Tom Bennett
In the Corner, oil over monotype on paper, 28″ x 20″
The Fat and the Thin, oil over monotype on paper, 20″ x 16″
Last night instead of preparing art for today I ironed shirts. I have no regrets, but I also have nothing to post. I don’t know if I’ve ever posted this before.
“Woven Watercolor Cross” 2005 It’s like 30″ wide or something. Watercolor soaked through canvas, woven.
This is a woven piece made out of a dropcloth that I used a lot of watercolor on. I then flipped the dropcloth, where you could see where the watercolor soaked through. Toni hates me for this because it’s so light sensitive I won’t allow it out of my closet.
-JD
Two more explorations in the current series. The one called Lauren’s Underbelly got its title from the happy little fact that the underpainting/monotype was a portrait of a pregnant woman. She apparently gave birth to this painting. It’s a girl!
Hidden Defect, oil into monotype on paper, 22′ x 16″
Lauren’s Underbelly, oil into monotype on paper, 18″ x 12″
Finally getting these to where I can spell words. However, these are actually the only letters I have enough of to do so. This will be the background for a stencil to be added hopefully this weekend.
Clearly legibility isn’t this style’s strong suit, but I can live with it for a repeated phrase like this. If I ever do longer texts it’s something I’ll have to manage. Perfect for ransom notes though.
-JD
This piece has a photographic feel and Kodak is on its death bed. That’s a sad thought.
Ektachromoplasm, oil over monotype on paper, 20″ x 16″
First things: I’ve started a Tumblr to post some of the pieces I make that will go into future quilts, and other progress shots.
This is a test of work I’ve been doing with stencils. I can use individual letter stencils to then create words and more.
Towards that end, here are 1000 Es that I created.
More after the jump. Read more »
I’ve been in Baltimore caring for my parents for a week and have been painting in the basement of the house I’m staying in. Here are some of the results.
I had the opportunity to take advantage of my father Harry’s experienced eye for design. He’s 92 years old. I asked him what he thought of the 1st piece below while I was still working through unresolved stages. He looked at it, covered an area with his hand and said, “get rid of this shape. These things don’t mean anything.” A title was born.
Tom Bennett
These Things Don’t Mean Anything, oil on monotpye, paper, 18″ x9″
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Below, I’ve posted a photo of an original monotype and the subsequent over-painting.
First stage: Original monotype on paper
figure 1993, monotype,
Final stage:
Figure 1-11-12, oil on paper, 2012,
My cousin and his bride, Kate, were married in December 2011. I promised them a good piece that night and used the full year allowed by good manners to finish it. The result was their Wedding/Christmas present this year.
Each piece is 24″ x 18″, and is a quit of paintings, collages and traditional fabric quilt. Pieces of each background are used to fill in the different planes of the form within it. This is what I was testing in this post.
Unfortunately, because I had to build the frames and stretch these in Los Angeles I wasn’t able to photograph them in my studio with my equipment. While my uncle and father are both good phtographers with solid equipment, we had a hell of a time getting worthwhile photos. Two of these are too blurry to show details of, and the two that are still have problems. So, while these are some of the most intricate pieces I created last year, I haven’t the documentation to prove it. Typical. Regardless, here they are:
-JD
Photos of the first stages of the process I’m exploring with these current reworked monotypes-to-paintings.
The monotype is an ancient relic from the early 90′s. Drawing over the image and reintegrating the underlying forms with the new marks, I then bring in paint of varying viscosities with brush and knife. The recontextualization of form may be overtly reconsidered or more likely metamorphosizes ‘organically’ (for lack of better pompous phrasing). Here much of the original is obliterated yet structurally the new image is recognizably built on form that is now rendered abstract. I’m away from my studio this week and won’t be reworking this until I get back, so this current unresolved stage will have to ferment like a soft wheel of gouda, also known as my head.
On average, the New Years weekend is probably my most productive of any time of the year. Decembers are usually spent finalizing Christmas gifts and rushing around trying to finish a variety of things. Then the Holidays come and I’m usually separated from the studio for about a week. By the time New Years comes, I am alone in my apartment without any near term responsibilities and all I want to do is play. Around this time last year I had just bought a new Sewing Machine and was experimenting with the form of quilt I played with all year.
This weekend may have been the most productive of my life. I started playing with stencils, and different colors of paint. Because these hues are ridiculously expensive, I started diluting them and creating my own mixtures. The result of these 2 things was a weekend of painting or preparing to paint (making stencils/mixing paint) near non-stop. I learned a lot in these 3 days, but may have to force myself to slow down to prevent burning myself out.
What I didn’t do much of was document what I was doing. So for now you’ll have to trust me and accept these 2 stencils of a passage from a poem by Baudelaire that I am working with to become accustomed with text:
(This one got cur off in the rush to scan it at midnight last night. Apologies.)
-JD
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″
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″
This is a quick sketch I made in photoshop at the end of last night. It fills in a geometrical perspective drawing I made with collaged paintings.
The collaged painting I used is here, which includes some paintings that Steph sent me to cut up for her.
Here’s a few others:
Read more »
This last week I’ve been collaborating with co-Darteboardist Toni to combine some of my collage methods with her collage forms. Here’s a couple results. These are still very early in the process, but I think they have promise.
A similar, second version of this couldn’t be finished on time. We decided this is good enough, but the color choices obscure the form. Fortunately, you can see the form better in this smaller experiment with collaged fabric:
Here is the initial design (shifted into stark black on white):
-JD
Happy Thanksgiving.
Age Before Beauty, 1993-2011, oil study into monotype on paper. 20″ x 16″
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″
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