"After French Toast"

*Clamp*
Gesso, Crayon, Permanent marker, Absorbent ground, Acrylic, Permanent marker, Acrylic, Acrylic, Permanent marker, Gloss Medium, etc...so-on-and-so-forth...
RAZOR BLADE

"After French Toast I-IX"  Jessica Kamp 24"x30" 2011 Acrylic

A photo shoot from 2008, I have made countless drawing and preliminary paintings and attempts to paint this model; finally materialized. Lesbanna I think you will be most pleased, you are on canvas.
I think it took me so long to paint her because of the beautiful nature of our friendship...it is true that a photograph and even a painting cannot achieve how one perceives another: as humans we 'see' so much more. For she is one of those very instances where so many art forms do not do her justices.
I am sure there are questions, like:
Why is there a dead moth in the foreground? ...because it was there, now what does that mean to you? Let me ask if one always sees the forest of the trees....
Why is it titled 'After French Toast'?... Before the photo shoot she made me Texas french toast with berries on top. I am so very special.
Why is the piece split in 9 pieces?...A nonatych is a nine paneled piece of work. It became apparent to me that large scale work, the way I used to paint, is currently difficult for average Jane/Joe to obtain. This saddens me as I feel art should have no connection to how many coins your pocket has. I am sick of the incredibly affluent being the only ones who hide art away in their storage areas or crowd it on their walls. And in addition a large piece is difficult for some to house...I don't care to paint smaller but it seems it has to be done. Furthermore, who is to say a whole piece is amazing, that every corner is perfect....some famous paintings are 1/3 a solid color...still that one spot could be the space [in time] the viewer falls in love with, the reason they want the piece for their own. OK so with that said, panels I-IX are sold either together or separate. Sure, someone may purchase the bottom-middle panel of this piece and BOOM the piece takes a different shape.

"After French Toast (Panels I-IX)"

 

 

 

Why are your under drawings still showing? ...I heard someone once tell another artist to 'admit to her materials' in lue to allowing her pencil marks to show... I agree, show how you arrived there. This filters into my theory of art having a life. Here, another comment on this piece being a nonatych (**I agree: say it ten times fast and it sounds like you are saying nonsense**), think of the separate pieces as being traveling pieces. How about that for a life of a painting, eh?

Why is there shininess in some areas and not others?...Frankly, I believe acrylic to be a dull, flat paint on its own. I can't have my highlights boring people. Illuminosity isn't just a fake word.
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Note on the current way my work is going: for years I have been painting with the thought that a piece changes over time, that there is no way to make something completely archival; perhaps, except in ones mind. There are preliminary images, lines, marks, etc. that will show or bleed into my paintings over time depending on the environment that they are exposed to and the care they are given. This I understand turns some people off to my work however if one were to understand that somethings in life can not truly be forever than the thought of co-existing with change is less painful or less likely to be eluded.


As a request from others I will be posting progression stages of my work...keep posted for that when it comes along.

Adventures in Acrylic-land

As my son is unloading the acrylic mediums into neat stacks on the floor, I browse the unfamiliar world of polymer paint additives at my local art store. Mind-boggling names, in-discriptive labels, all in neat white tubs lined perfectly on the shelf. I think:
"is this what it has come too....?"

My narrow use of additives late in my oil painting years, included candle wax (Yeah, I was going for the stuff the flakes and cracks off the canvas to re-view what hides shallowly beneath the surface) and coffee grounds [with a 8:1 ratio in scolding water]. There was not much else I wanted to affix to my process.....but that is where all of this start.

Candle Wax and base of Preminition i

And this is where I left off when I was with [my first] child. I struggled for 8 months trying to find alternative ways to paint with my oils, not breath the fumes, protect my skin. I changed my palette to include those colors least noxious, hated my new palette, failed to embrace the colors vomiting on my canvas.....and then:
I decided to try and search ways to make paints that wouldn't have the potential of strangling me in my sleep.

I went to spice shops, herbal apothecaries, natural food stores, art supply stores with personnel inept to help me find the tools I was looking for [a glass muller]...the drug store. I gathered my loot and started mixing spices with rubbing alcohol in small dropper bottles. And then I had my son.

Turmeric, Annatto, Indigo, and Black Onyx Cocoa Dyes in Breastfeeding i

My feet were found somewhere below me at the art store where I purchased a few goody mediums to start off with. It is time. I am ready to paint. I am ready to portray the quality of feeling that was once seen in my work. Because no matter how hard I tried to rebel against my professors I graduated a progeny of their teaching...no matter how momentary.

I am starting to feel like the time I spent in a University was purely a stage likened to that in the womb; And now birthed into the world it is time for my wings to unfurl.