The Art of Recycling

July saw me finishing off and framing a new batch of pieces and driving down to Geneva & Verbier to deliver my new work to Nanuq gallery, with a cheeky stopover to catch up with all the guys and gals I have missed so much in Geneva.  The trip was fab on so many levels. I was able to re-visit Verbier during the summertime, take some photographs at the top of Mont Fort, get another Vernissage under my belt, drive down and back - with some great company - through the beautiful French countryside, see all my friends whilst partying at the pre-fete and best of all I got to meet the two newest arrivals to Geneva, Poppy & Jake (Jake very kindly, after months of my urging and coercing, arrived two days before I was due to return to the UK, so I was able to meet the little man). It was, quite the July.  

So now the pieces are in the gallery, I wait for the sales to roll in. And wait....AND WAIT.. And I am still waiting. Unfortunately, this is the way the artist lives their life. No sales for ages, then a bunch at once. I am hoping they come before my death though, not wanting to go all Van Gough (although I have done the Absinthe thing, just not the ear thing, or the death thing yet...). Husband has had trouble adjusting to this way of getting income. We sink lots of money into high quality materials, framing, gallery, promo material etc and then there is nothing coming back at you, so it can, at times, be very frustrating. Although for a person with no patience whatsoever, I am showing great tolerance and even seeing flashes of a silver lining every now and again.

So I have run out of canvases. How can a painter work with nothing to paint on? Well, people paint on more than just canvas nowadays and technically I could paint on anything that oil paint sticks to, but canvases are easier and more portable which, I am sure, is why they have remained the surface of choice for artists all over the world since, god, I don't know, 1410? 

Looking around my studio, there are about 8 paintings that I have started but have either messed up to the point of no return, hate or both. they have languished in both studios, following me back to the UK whilst I decided what I could do with them and yesterday, I found the answer. I would re-cycle. I would strip the paint off the canvas and re-use it for something I wouldn't mess up or hate. 

My experiment yielded 2 results: Oil paint is much harder to get off a canvas than you could ever imagine and it is far easier and cheaper to buy new canvas.

Being a knife painter, I generally lay the paint on nice and thick (never thinking I would have to reverse the process at some later date). And then I add more. It means my paintings take ages (like, a year) to dry, but usually gives the finish I want. When stripping back, every layer is a nightmare. I used scalpel blades, stanley blades, sandpapers of various abrasiveness and turps. I soon re-evaluated my target to get all the paint off the canvas to, just get as much off as you can to give a smooth surface. It has taken me nearly 2 days and an almost broken shoulder to do 2 canvases. I also think the amount of money spent on turps, breathing mask, sandpaper and blades could easily have gone towards a new canvas. A nice, shiny, new, clean, flat canvas. Damn it. 

As I wrapped a new bit of sandpaper around the block, I blinked away the oil paint dust and took a look at my work and I saw a little bit of that silver lining I was telling you about. As I was sanding the paintings down, the effect, through the varying layers of colour and thickness, was great. Well, It wasn't AMAZING, but I saw a flash of what it could be. The idea that you are creating something by destroying it got me thinking about what destruction meant - was destruction only change labelled subjectively? The fact that everything is temporary makes it available to destruction, but why do we choose to categorise certain acts and occurrences as being 'destruction' and others as 'change'. How much does something have to change before you consider it destroyed?

I now have 2 canvases, one of which I am going to recycle and use as a surface for another painting. The other, I am not sure. It sort of stands on its own as a piece, an inspirational piece. So I plan to pursue this further, much to my own horror. I really don't know how my shoulder will cope with more sanding. I think this is why artists have assistants. Daniel San! Sand the floor!