Earth Water Sky IV

As I worked on the panels I was thinking about framing methods. It looked as if each one was going to be more than 85" H, matted. How to make the framed pieces light enough to transport?  

They'd have to be under Plexiglas, but we'd need to deal with the static generated when paper comes into contact (or even near) the plastic.  

Susan Fader of Ditto put me in touch with another artist making large pastels, Michael Ramseur. His paintings of the looming presence of Danvers State Hospital are all the more powerful by their enormous size, some 12' long or more.  Michael was familiar with the issue and suggested multiple layers of Krylon spray.  

Multiple was right!  I probably used up five cans of spray on the three panels.  Unfortunately, spraying a pastel even lightly causes the medium to shrink and harden, a choice I'm always loathe to make with smaller pieces and only resort to if storage or transport require it.

In this case the whole surface darkened a bit and the pastel concentrated in the valleys of the paper's texture; however there was no choice.  

Secretly I was vowing to paint in oil from now on, though the medium of pastel is so luxurious and beautiful I doubt I'll keep that promise...

Earth Water Sky III

Another way to manage changes to inaccessible areas is to lay down waxed paper - this makes it possible to step or put weight on the painting without smudging.

I also found that if I stood on the arm of the couch and made a digital image I could reduce the composition and come closer to the overall effect of stepping back at a greater distance.  The reducing glass was too small for this usage.

Still, I had no real idea how things would look when the panels were at 90 degrees from the floor and at the other end of a big room - my studio is only about 18' long and not wide enough for all three to hang up together completely successfully.

Earth Water Sky

I began this piece in August 2008 at the suggestion of Susan Fader of Ditto Editions, my amazing fine art printers.  She said, "Why don't you buy a roll of paper and make something really big?"  Since I was preparing for a new show in a month this seemed like a good solution for a large room needing a strong statement at one end.

The subject was a series of lagoons at the foot of Ausangate, a sacred mountain or Apu south of the Peruvian city of Cusco, where I had been earlier in the summer to study.  A large triptych might give the sense of being inside the vast space of this landscape.  Most of all I wanted to convey the primeval life and power that surrounds this holy mountain.

At the beginning of each workday I lit a candle to open sacred space and used the mesa to activate cekes to this Apu.  There had been a strong connection established during the trip and I hoped the energetic pathways were still awake.

Never having worked this large in pastel before, I had to figure out how to do it as I went along.  Unlike a painted mural, I had to work flat on the floor and find ways not to smudge everything as I walked over it.  After sketching out the basic composition I began working from the top down on each panel, sliding foamcore under each section as I worked on it.

 

Another challenge was the amount of pastel dust I created... I ended up sweeping regularly, mopping the floor with damp cloths and taking plenty of algin, aka Solaray Detox.   

Earth Water Sky II

I was also using large amounts of pastel, but fortunately I had bought a lot of supplies when our local framer, The Art Corner discontinued them.  Sometimes you make these leaps of faith (storage?) and it pays off...

Compositionally, I wanted the three finished panels to work alone or together, but if together, not necessarily in any order.  Since it would require a large public  or private space (more on this later) to display them, I also wanted to make them legible together or on three separate walls of the same room.

The only way I could monitor progress was to clip each panel-in-progress and hang it high on the wall or by the rafters.  

Needless to say, puddies were banned from the studio for the month.