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″
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″
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″
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
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,
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.
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″
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″
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
This is pending sale, pending on spending.
Submissive, Oil over monotype on printmaking paper, 20″ x 16″
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″
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″
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
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