ROPE and it's story.

It's been many years I have making paintings. I have in the last era begun to make some amazing paintings on Rope, usually braided by myself. I have yet to use anything braided by another, except the factory in their creation of the base material I use. The impetus of my using rope in my art comes from a film called Herb And Dorothy, the Art Collectors of Legendary status. In the film there is a section including Mike Wallace from 60 Minutes in the 80's and he is being directed towards an extremely small artwork on the wall that just happens to be from the legend Richard Tuttle, a small 3 Inch slice of white rope and a small braid nail attaching it to the wall. It took many years for that one moment to soak into my imagination so I could work with it myself. But it hit me one night, like a thief in the night it just broke into my conscious mind and out came the idea that I could paint on a piece of rope. The original ideas have no photo documentation, but they were created in my place in Tamaqua Pennsylvania, I began by actually combining my appreciation for Fred Sandback by stretching my acrylic yarn around different spaces in my studio/home in PA. Then once stretched, usually using four strings instead of one to catch the texture paint. None of them really satisfied me at the time but they did light a fire inside me that came out months later back in Columbus Ohio. Ironic that as I sit here today and kind of wish I had taken some pics of the installations of those works. I can imagine the rough space that was meant to become a nice back room in my painting studio that I never got to move into. The yarn pulled tight in the middle of the room running from floor to ceiling, I had been able to anchor it because the space had been so raw and old without worrying about if I was about to mess up the space. I didn't go very far with the texture paint since at that time it was a bit on the lean side so I had to make sure that what I was messing with wasn't going to rid me of all my paint material. I remember it being a light blue yarn and I used yellow texture paint which created their own play of colors, maybe the reason people stick with white and black in their "developmental" periods is because of the highly contrasting way they play together. The one color really makes the other stand out and therefore can be judged in a more clear manner as opposed to just tossing every color at the work and hoping for the best. I kept the original work up for a few months and checking in on it everyday during my in's and out's of the building. One thing I absolutely loved about the idea of your painting studio below you is as you leave the house everyday, the work is all right there, just staring back at you and asking when you are gonna come play around some more. 

For the time being I'll be posting up images of the new rope paintings. Thanks for checking in. 

 

12-05-2021

Acrylic on Braided Poly Rope
28 X 5 IN
71.1 X 12.7 CM

I made this alongside a larger sized as i was enjoying the idea of making a rope painting that reminded me of an old chainsaw chain. One with dried up dirt and wood dust in it. Reminding me of walking out to my Fathers shed and seeing the landscaping tools in their well used states.

 

Click to enlarge.