This is a snippet of a larger piece I’m working on for my upcoming show July 11th #CognitiveDissonance in SF. This particular piece is done in oil, a monster 5×7’. Some of the pieces I create are in acrylic, some are in oil. I’ve fallen deeply in love with oil, however, because of the amount of detail it allows and the way the canvas receives the paint. I love acrylic too, but I notice when it comes down to detail the nature of acrylic is to build up and quickly dry, creating rubble and drag. A kind of misdirected build up can occur if you’re not on top of it working fast, and as I sometimes have to do whip out a little sandpaper or a flat edge razor blade and get rid of the lumps and bumps before I lay down my final touches. What I’m describing is really minute and small, but when you’re working with a 20/0 brush these are dilemmas that only the artist would notice that drive us crazy. It kind of reminds me of early tagging days when I had a brand new juicy marker and would either tag on a dusty window or a rough surface, it would create a drag that wasn’t clean as opposed to a white oil marker on a clean black glass window that gives you a sharp precise intended look #vandalism Because of that I’ve learned how to paint extremely fast with acrylic, while in oil it seems to be days, weeks, years with slow gradual progress but that’s why I love painting in oil because it’s such a challenge, and at the end of the day whatever line, blend or edge I want to render its stickiness seems to want to work with me and help me create what I intend it to be.
