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| Summer Day acrylic, ink, paper, 12 x 12 panel |
Jo Reimer, an artist, living and working in Portland Oregon
Showing posts with label secret writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label secret writing. Show all posts
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Summer Day, a painting
by Jo Reimer
I've been having a grand time taking half-done paintings and seeing how I can resurrect them. Like this one. I loved the hot colors but simply couldn't seem to figure out how to make anything of it. Finally I simply started playing, adding and subtracting elements. This is the result. It looks great in a simple black frame.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Writing on the Wall... collage
by Jo Reimer
Since I've stockpiled a number of cradled canvases I decided to experiment with presenting collages on the canvas even though I prefer a smooth surface for collage since the papers are more likely to form a strong bond.
The first step was to add a smooth coating of gesso and then a coat of gel medium to prepare the surface. The gel medium ensures that areas which don't immediately bond can be fixed later by ironing that area. The heat melts the medium on the substrate as well as the medium on back of the papers, sealing them together forever. I only needed to do that in one area across the bottom.
I drew the shape of the canvas onto my paint table paper and designed the compositon in that area rather than working directly on top of the canvas.
The paper in the middle area is what I call "writing that can't be read", sort of code writing. This was done by a friend and photocopied onto washi paper.
I love collage!
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| Writing on the Wall 10" x 30" x 1" Collage on Cradled Canvas |
Since I've stockpiled a number of cradled canvases I decided to experiment with presenting collages on the canvas even though I prefer a smooth surface for collage since the papers are more likely to form a strong bond.
The first step was to add a smooth coating of gesso and then a coat of gel medium to prepare the surface. The gel medium ensures that areas which don't immediately bond can be fixed later by ironing that area. The heat melts the medium on the substrate as well as the medium on back of the papers, sealing them together forever. I only needed to do that in one area across the bottom.
I drew the shape of the canvas onto my paint table paper and designed the compositon in that area rather than working directly on top of the canvas.
The paper in the middle area is what I call "writing that can't be read", sort of code writing. This was done by a friend and photocopied onto washi paper.
I love collage!
Saturday, February 02, 2008
What motivates you to work?
What motivates you to work? I’ve come to know that I need deadlines; left to myself I can fritter away a day along with the best of the procrastinators even though I have the best intentions in the world. Look at this week. I usually start on my sermon note piece by Monday afternoon but what with this bad cold, a new baby, and all sorts of other challenges I didn’t really start until Wednesday. I listened to the sermon on CD and took lots of notes, made some lists, and drew a page full of compositions but I didn’t start with the art until Friday. Let me tell you… my Saturday deadline was looming over my head because these pieces take lots of time! I had no wiggle room.
Then I couldn’t find the right shade of blue paper, so I got out my acrylic and inks and stained a bunch of rice paper. When I tested my pen and my stamp pad ink I found that the ink bled on the paper. Now in near panic mode I emailed my calligrapher friend Alesia who knows all about ink and paper, asking how one seals soft papers.
You see, when paper is hand made, like the rice paper I used, it may not have been sized to prevent ink from seeping into the fibers like blotter paper. This was the case with my paper. An online source gave a recipe for cooking gelatin, alum, and water which is boiled and painted onto the paper to seal the surface. I did that. I then made the artwork and then I
followed Alesia’s suggestion to paint the paper with 1:1 acrylic matte medium and water. It worked. No bleeding ink.
I’ve put in quite a few really pleasant hours today doing the rubber stamping and stenciling on this piece. It’s my favorite part of this work… it’s a quiet time, and meditative, prayer-like, and I find myself memorizing the lines, asking myself and God all sorts of questions. I get into a rhythm, listen to a bit of music, time flies, and it almost seems like the world pauses to stretch my time to fit the amount of work I have to do. Now it’s finished and I am thinking about the next composition and the next deadline.
Then I couldn’t find the right shade of blue paper, so I got out my acrylic and inks and stained a bunch of rice paper. When I tested my pen and my stamp pad ink I found that the ink bled on the paper. Now in near panic mode I emailed my calligrapher friend Alesia who knows all about ink and paper, asking how one seals soft papers.
You see, when paper is hand made, like the rice paper I used, it may not have been sized to prevent ink from seeping into the fibers like blotter paper. This was the case with my paper. An online source gave a recipe for cooking gelatin, alum, and water which is boiled and painted onto the paper to seal the surface. I did that. I then made the artwork and then I
followed Alesia’s suggestion to paint the paper with 1:1 acrylic matte medium and water. It worked. No bleeding ink.I’ve put in quite a few really pleasant hours today doing the rubber stamping and stenciling on this piece. It’s my favorite part of this work… it’s a quiet time, and meditative, prayer-like, and I find myself memorizing the lines, asking myself and God all sorts of questions. I get into a rhythm, listen to a bit of music, time flies, and it almost seems like the world pauses to stretch my time to fit the amount of work I have to do. Now it’s finished and I am thinking about the next composition and the next deadline.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Text on Green
Text on Green is a full sheet acrylic and gesso painting on gessoed Arches 140. I mixed the last half cup of gesso in the bucket with some Chromium Oxide Green, a splat of yellow and just a hint of a strange leftover red and got a nice soft green which I squeegeed over the surface of the paper. The black lines were applied with the edge of a piece of cardboard that I pulled through some dark paint, and then I used a small squeeze bottle to apply curvy white lines and dots. I let it dry overnight.
In my journals I do lots of what I call "writing that can't be read" so I used that technique to balance the straight black lines. Using a Zig marker I started writing on the painting using big loopy letters that soon lost any resemblance to actual writing as I let line after line swirl and loop over and around the previous line. My scattered thoughts became painted lines, meaningful to me but concealed from the viewer.
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