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Q: How long does it take you to complete a pastel-on-sandpaper painting?
A: Mine is a slow and labor-intensive process. First, there is foreign travel to find the cultural objects – masks, carved wooden animals, paper mâché figures, and toys – that are my subject matter. If they are heavy I ship them home.
Next comes planning exactly how to photograph them, lighting and setting everything up, and shooting a roll of 220 film with my Mamiya 6 camera. I still like to use an analog camera for my fine art work, although I am rethinking this. I have the film developed, decide which image to use, and order a 20” x 24” reference photograph from Manhattan Photo on West 20th Street.
Then I am ready to start. I work on each pastel-on-sandpaper painting for approximately three months. I am in my studio 7 to 8 hours a day, five days a week. During that time I make thousands of creative decisions as I apply and layer soft pastels (I have 8 tables-worth to choose from!), blend them with my fingers, and mix new colors directly on the sandpaper. A finished piece consists of up to 30 layers of soft pastel. My self-invented technique accounts for the vivid, intense color that often leads viewers of my originals to look very closely and ask, “What medium is this?” I believe I am pushing soft pastel to its limits, using it in ways that no other artist has done.
Comments are welcome!
Q: There is plenty of joyful and vibrant color in your work, but shadows are also ever-present. I would almost go as far as calling them the supporting players of your compositions. Can you elaborate on their importance and significance?
A: When I arrange the setups, I spend a lot of time lighting them, mainly in a search for intriguing cast shadows. At one point in the “Domestic Threats” series the shadows became so important that I thought of them as physical objects in their own right. So I made them very prominent, outlined them, and otherwise gave them added emphasis. Often they had no relation to the actual objects as I created any shadow shapes that looked interesting in the painting. When I go to art galleries and museums, I always look at the shadows surrounding well-lit three dimensional objects. I find shadows quite fascinating. How less visually satisfying Calder’s mobiles and stabiles would be without the cast shadows!