Friday, August 23, 2013

The Backside of Painting


For the past two days I have been cleaning, wrapping, and packaging, paintings, getting them ready for storage. I had leaned one against the wall, backside out, and it occurred to me that because I mill and stretch my own canvasses that each backside is unique and very telling to the history of each painting. In many ways the backside of the painting communicates the human experience more than the front, for one can see the physical traces left behind from the effort exerted in making this thing evolve into a finished product. Drips, staples, extra canvas, and exposed wood, the bones, internal organs, all revealed, fragile and destructible, no magic here.

It is my hope and dream, one day to have a show with all my paintings facing the wall. The nature of the human hand working, building, forcing into reality, a show of the back sides of the paintings, true beauty revealed.




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