The Process

The canvas is replaced with aluminum panel and the painting occurs underwater, over a period of time. Contemporary elements of time, temperature, and chance combine with sedimentation and evaporation processes to create works that give the artist a variety of new roles to pursue in the creative act. Many works are created outdoors, allowing temperature to play a role in the process. Pieces created during the winter months introduce actual frost patterns as compositional elements. Artistic control and aesthetic choices are co-opted by the process, varying the artist’s tasks as catalyst, facilitator, editor and at times, spectator.

This give and take makes for an exciting method of discovery where the visual product has many possibilities, but none can be assured or guaranteed. When nature imposes its will on the materials at hand, new twists develop, creating additional avenues to explore.

What happens once a panel is submerged is often entirely different from the assumed result.

“Some of my favorite pieces are those that paint themselves. The less they are interfered with and manipulated, the purer and often more beautiful they are. As a work begins it’s life underwater, the stage is set to allow nature’s quiet energies to become visible, giving form to processes that are as old as time.”

Another approach to art making on display here at Zola emphasizes a more traditional hands on approach, but the canvas is replaced this time with fiberglass screen.

For more information contact the artist at (814) 933-2126