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This painting was the second in which I used my new oversized palette knife. I have learned that one of the most crucial things in painting is the tool with which you apply the paint. A different tool can give your style an entirely different feel and rhythm. I tend to get stuck when I'm no longer able to surprise myself. When you use a new tool you'd expect some learning time to be necessary, but instead, the first moves I make with it are usually the most fresh and effective that I'll ever make. Then, when I feel my style is becoming lustless and inert I start to wonder what else is out there. Yesterday I used gel medium to stick pieces of toilet paper onto the canvas, whatever it takes to get unstuck.
Recently I bought a tube of alkyd resin (intended as an alternative to acrylic modelling paste) to mix with oil paint. Unlike oils and acrylics, oils and alkyds aren't antipodes, but although the mix was quite interesting (it has a subltety that enhances the quality of the oil paint, gives it more depth and luster), it can't replace the acrylics-oils mix, strangely perhaps. For structure painting the acrylics-oils mix is just prefect and I used it on Woman Crying profusely. As a matter of fact, I hardly touch my brushes anymore, while last year the brush was still my main tool, responsible for most of the poetry that my style had. Last year my style was slightly more oriented towards the drawing part (where the brush comes in), now the emphasis lies a little more on the conceptual side, which I try to give form by means of color areas (hence the knife).
90 x 86.5 cm
oils & acrylics on canvas created: 2010
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