Painting Without Paintbrushes

Many of the pieces on this web page are painted, but not in any ordinary way. The most common painting technique is a multi-layered, highly spontaneous combination

of spraying, spattering, scraping, and dabbing, usually over several unusual resist mediums, including rubber cement, rope and string, jig-sawed sticks, gravel, and sprayed and spattered water.

Early layers of this process tend toward the bold and even garish, but become subtler when partially obscured by subsequent layers.

Here’s the beginning of the top of the “Entry Table.” Raw orange over the primer undercoat.

Then some gold, broken up by water droplets and sticks. Where the water and sticks intercept the spray, the orange shows through.

Then heavier green, in steps, with various kinds of temporary gunk always intercepting the spray and mottling the design. In this case the resist is water again, drizzled on from an old Windex bottle.

The finished top seems made by geological forces, not human hands.