5. Week Two: The Studio as a Place of Serendipitous Discovery

In an interview contemporary artist Carrol Dunham referred to the “collision of imagery” found in Sigmar Polke’s paintings (Alibis, 2014). This is how I viewed the second meeting of Big Paintings Club. The students scoured the room for alternate ways to apply paint and move it about the surfaces resulting in a collision of imagery as well as a collision of techniques. It was a time of testing and experimentation. One student found she could cover large areas quickly by using a paint roller.
Another discovered impasto by taking a polyethylene bottle from the science cabinet, filling it with undiluted paint, and using the spout to apply bold lines of paint directly to the surface of her work. A third student used a spray bottle to apply layers of color. I suggested she first thoroughly mix the paint. Instead she filled the bottle with paint and water, screwed on the nozzle, and began spraying. Because of her decision not to mix the paint the resulting oscillations of cobalt blue, lilac and lavender was reminiscent of Monet’s late works. This led another student to test the effects of partially mixed paint. She shouted, “Rufo look, it looks cool if you don’t mix it all the way” as she rolled broad strokes of cerulean blue and titanium white over a damp field of carmine red.