In the Beginning

Summer of 85 (Mill Dam)

I want to go back to the start of my directional spraying technique and take a look at some of the art that influenced the pieces I am doing today. I had taken a summer independent study watercolor class where I intended to do on location “plein air” paintings. Things started out well and every morning I would pack up my bicycle with my equipment and some snacks and set out to find something new to paint. After a couple weeks I happened across a set of Dr. Ph. Martin’s Concentrated Watercolors while perusing an art shop. I was totally taken with the intensity of the colors and started experimenting with them in my airbrush. I had used the airbrush in college but tired of the mixing and cleaning that went along with using the tube acrylics which were pretty much the only option in the early years. It didn’t take long after finding the concentrated colors before I was spending all my time with the experimenting with the medium. It wasn’t until years later that I found out that the watercolors weren’t lightfast. The good news is that I had only sold a few pieces and was able to warn the people who bought them to keep them out of the light. It was during this time that I started to notice the subtle effects that I could achieve by spraying the colors on from different directions. I experimented with different types of paper to try to bring out the color effects but could never get the kind of texture I needed to achieve it to its fullest. By then we had moved to Minnesota. Here I met an artist friend Chris Hindle who suggested my taking a papermaking class with Walter Nottingham at UW-River Falls but that’s another story.

Summer of 85 #1



Summer of 85 # 2



Untitled

Untitled #1

Untitled #2