Working on Paper (images continued)
For years I have only painted mostly on paper. I’m not even sure how that evolved. Maybe it started with the economy of it all. I could store paintings easily. I could carry a whole exhibition in my VW bug. I was using pure pigments with various binders because that was cheaper than buying tubes of paint. I used to love to go downtown in NYC and shop at the pigment dealer. Whole barrels of brilliant color blew my mind. Slowly it evolved from a convenience to a preference. I fell in love with the colors of the pigments. I loved the idea of working for so long on a painting that was so frail, that could be so easily ripped. I loved the fact that, if a painting wasn’t going well, I could cut it up and save the parts I liked. (A friend who had studied at some fancy school in London told me that the best Rembrandts were the ones he cut up himself.) At some point, it just became the way I worked. It was the language in which I expressed myself.
Well, sometimes I work in oil paint too.