It Just Happened…
You may be wondering what in the world I am up to here today with these two images. Mind you, they are just cropped corners of some work I have been focusing on lately. At any rate, do you see the darker purple on the lighter in the above photo? Those are dried ink flecks. I use pre-stretched canvases a lot for a variety of reasons. These come wrapped in plastic which both makes me crazy and makes me glad. I hate the waste of the plastic, but I appreciate the protection, too. Recently, I have been carefully removing this plastic along the heat sealed seams. When I do this right, I can get a nice wide piece of sheet plastic which is double the length of the canvas (plus the depth). I like it because the plastic is strong and not as clingy as plastic kitchen wrap.
So what, you say? Well, I have also been squirting acrylic ink on acrylic painted canvases and then mushing it under the plastic sheeting. This allows me to see the ink moving on the surface of the canvas and have some kind of control – sometimes. I found if I continue to do this the layers of ink will build up on the plastic sheeting. I mainly just leave it around to get the most use of it I can.
One day, I was moving a piece of this plastic and some flecks fell off. What? This is beautiful…it was all irridescent and beautifully caught the light. So I scrunched the plastic with the heavy, flaking, dry ink over wet ink and paint…beautiful. I just let it fall where it might. Then, I decided to see if I could peel it off in sheets. Yes, I could!
Here you can see where I have applied some of the sheets to this painting. If you look closely, near the top, just to the left of center there is a piece of this dried ink which is not lying flat. Do you see it? There are others, too.
Now I can’t toss out these sheets. I wonder how long I can get away with using them over and over…saving the dry ink…reusing the plastic? Now the ideas are flowing.
Do you have a good way to reuse plastic? I wonder if I painted thick enough, in reverse order, if I could pull entire paintings off this plastic and adhere it to another support? Do you think this might be messing up the archival qualities of the work…using this plastic like this?
As always I am interested in your thoughts.
Have a Great Day!
