A BEAUTIFUL SPOT IN A BEAUTIFUL HOME

Last night I had the pleasure of visiting friends in the new home of goldleaf.  This piece sold last month along with many others when I turned my home into a gallery for the KVIE Live Art Auction event.  I had printed labels for all the paintings inside, but goldleaf was actually hanging out in my studio; as such I didn’t expect it to be leaving that night and I never got a chance to sign it.  So, last night I brought a small tube of paint and a brush with me and officially marked this piece complete!  Read on and see pictures below behind the story of goldleaf!

goldleaf was created in March of 2019.  Production involved several sessions with different layers, techniques, and media.  The base coat is a solid body acrylic that I let dry before I pulled out Gravitron to add much of the background textures and subtle complimentary colors, also all acrylics.  I used a large color palette for this one and when you get up close to inspect, all the colors come out from hiding behind the bright and bold highlights that capture the eye from far away.  Below is the first progress shot I captured before these white and metallic highlights were applied…

I really didn’t have a composition in mind on this one… My goal was to experiment with multiple different techniques all in a cohesive unity together.  For the background I used palette knives, brushes, and gravitron in a very loose and wide-stroking applications.  Some colors were applied wet on wet to get blending effects between the colors; and some layers are wet on dry to create very distinct contrasts.  Keeping with creation of contrast, white was next… I continued to diversify the techniques used on this piece by using a very “Pollock-esque” splashing, something reminiscent of tanked II (see in my Gallery under sold items).

I remember the weekend back in March 2019 vividly for how productive it was… I’ve only had a few sessions where I work on multiple pieces all at once and this weekend was one of those times.  You can see in the pic above I maintained much of the same color palette when creating both bloom and googly alongside goldleaf.

The last two layers involve aluminum foil hot-glued down, and then spray mounted gold leaf over the top.  This was my first time ever working with gold leaf materials (and aluminum foil, for that matter=); I was very impressed with the effects and learned a lot.  I still have some materials in the studio that may come out in the future.

The aluminum is not completely covered up and actually rises off of the canvas like a relief map showing contours of a mountain range.  The gold leaf broke apart along the ridgelines in many spots to reveal the silver aluminum beneath… In fact, the lighting last night was terrific and I saw some nuanced colors in the many folds popping through that I’d never seen before.  You can see some of this in the picture below that I took last night, along with the featured image at top of this post, both showing my final marks on goldleaf.

Thank you Dorina and Ken for making a place in your home for goldleaf!  I can’t wait to get started on the next one for you! =)