Thought I’d share a quickie work I framed the other day. I say ‘quickie’ even though it was weeks in the making… mainly cause I had no idea what I was going to do.

Firstly, I glued an old, yellowed book page from a stack of throw away books I’d collected to a sheet of cartridge paper to create a background to work on like I did here, then I left it for ages, sitting on the kitchen table among the hundreds of things I was going to get to ‘soon’…

While working on one of my large paintings I decided to experiment with the texture building paste I’d bought, so I mixed up some paint and applied it to the paper, thinking I would do a small painting of a wall and stairs. I let it dry and as I looked at it, I felt totally uninspired to continue, so I let it sit and think about its sins a little longer.

Thing was, the more I looked at it. the more I liked the simplicity of the colours on the background and didn’t want to make it into anything other than a background.

Sometime during that period, I saw a FB post about a guy who created art by doing backgrounds then whacking paint covered sticks and branches onto his canvases. Hm… This was only small so I couldn’t go whacking the hell out of it… but I could try pressing something onto it… that might work.

And that’s what I did. Since it was a neutral background, I wanted to do something to bring it to life. I had some of those fuzzy dried flower arrangement things from other projects, so I chose my colours, et viola!

I used the same ‘flower’ to print the image in 3 different colours and I liked it. It’s like nothing I’ve ever done before, but I was pleased.

I had a small frame that fit the work, and I had flat white spray paint, so I sprayed the frame, gave it a bit of rub in spots where the paint hadn’t gone on well, and there it is.

At this point comes the warning/disclaimer. When doing spray painting at home, don’t pull the cap off the spray paint with a vice grip and the determination of a fat man going after the last chip at the family dinner table. I pulled it off (they do like to make them almost impossible to pull off!) and pulled off the spray nozzle at the same time. Putting the nozzle back on caused all kinds of grief as you can see.

But hey, it’s pretty normal for me to have paint all over my hands, my clothes, my shoes… no one expects anything less.

You might notice a bandage on one finger…? I got that while rummaging through a toolbox to find a screwdriver. Instead, I found a razor paint scraper (the kind you use on glass) without its protective cover.

Let that be a lesson as well.

z