Rothko and uses of materials.

After visiting the National Gallery in DC last year, and taking a number of photos. Most of which didn't come out the way I had hoped because these new cameras pretty much always need a tripod, if you aren't using the flash.

I was visiting the section with all the Rothko's and Newman's, one thing really hit me about the one particular painting from the Seagram Mural job he did. How crappily it had been painted.

As you can see in these pics. The one painting from the Seagram murals has got some pretty crappy paint that Rothko used in these paintings. I don't know what the hell kind of paint he had used on these paintings. But it sure wasn't artists grade oil or acrylic paint.

I've heard many stories about how he was always using cheap materials in his paintings. Which is not what one should be doing when you are a serious painter as he was. You can look in these pics and see where one section of paint has bled through the rest of the paint on top of it. It almost looks as if someone had taken a torch to that section to make the other paint seep through the top coat.

Seeing this really bothered me, as I really try to take as good care of my paintings as I possibly can. As do my other painter friends. Only in my very first paintings were I not using high grade artist acrylic paint.

Thinking about this painting and it's bad aging, leads me to think of the Rothko Chapel in Houston where he has his largest paintings. Which from his uses of materials, and his being stingy with the cash flow he had been given for the set of paintings. We today will never be able to see the paintings as they were when they left his studio. I know they have been "restored" but in cases of restoration, it never turns out the same way as the original had been the day it was finished. If you want to learn a bit about how restorers can be, just read the book "I was Vermeer"...it'll tell you about a number of ways restorers over the years have screwed up painting after painting.









Here's where you can really see some of the results of using inferior materials. Thankfully he didn't do this on all of his paintings.

So in lieu of the above. Please let me say to all of you painters out there who wish to be selling paintings like crazy. Give a thought to the future and how you would want these paintings to look after 50 years, 100 years, and then ask yourself...is this house paint really something I should be using on this canvas. Think about the people who will become your patrons, spending their well earned money on a painting of yours only to have it fall apart after 15-20 years. And go to your local artist supply store and put down some money on the good stuff. You'll feel a lot better about it in the future, when you can look at your paintings and they still look as good as the day you finished them.

I have also seen a number of older Twombly's where they are now under glass, as the paint has literally fallen off the weave of the canvas.



Oh it's so sad to see great paintings go bad.

A Rookie Mistake

Yesterday. I reverted myself to an earlier state of being, when I realized that I had thinned down the paint mixture a bit too much, while finishing up a painting. Why didn't I simply work with the paint the way it had originally been in it's nice plastic can. Doing the directions I normally use for creating the pouring on my painting. I remembered back to how thin and gorgeous some of my earlier paintings had been and wanted to attempt to produce something akin to that feeling again. I guess back then I must have really been on the edge of pigment destruction, for all those pourings came out in a very matte manner. While the paintings I make today have much more of a gloss surface. Through my attempts and successes at glazing, I might have went a bit far in that manner also which didn't allow more paint to stick to it...but I don't think that was the problem. I simply got overzealous and mixed far too much water into the containers I use for this particular stage of my painting.

Even before I began work that day. I knew something was a miss. When I went to mix the colors with the end of my paintbrush. I noted that the paint seemed to really wanna come off the brush when I pulled it from the can full of color. It's always the little things that you should REALLY take note of and make sure that when you see little hints, you take them into consideration. Had I done that yesterday, I might be sitting here looking at a newly finished painting. Alas, I now sit here looking at the results and remains of the mistake I made yesterday. A wonderful yellow painting with errie, ugly, dirty looking paint caked upon many parts of the surface. Sections of the wood filler that I could not get the wasted paint from.

Not to worry too much about it. I will begin from stage 4 and will rectify this into a beautiful painting, of small scale but large in heart.