More Posts from Skipieohhhhh and Others
Buckling of paper
Watercolour paper warping occurs when the fibres in the paper absorb moisture unevenly, causing it to expand and contract in different places. The flat surface becomes warped and it dries stuck in this position
Let’s imagine that when you paint on your paper, you’re adding water to the top of it. Those fibres will expand, yet the underneath of the paper will be dry. This causes the top of the paper to lift up as it grows, while the bottom pulls under, creating an arch.
And if you create puddles of really wet patches when you paint, the surface will be wetter and drier in different areas, creating uneven warping.
As the paper dries, the fibres will decrease in size again, but the paper may remain a little warped.
Bonus: How to stretch your watercolour paper
Prep your paper by thoroughly wetting both sides in a layer of clean water. Lay out on a flat surface like a wooden board and pull and stretch the paper tight. Tape down the edges with strong painters tape, or staple it down. Allow to dry completely before painting on it.
Some artists swear by stretching their papers, but I find it difficult and fiddly to lift them off the board. You’d probably have to just cut the edges off next to the tape because it won’t peel, and this is too faffy for my impatient brain. But if stretching works for you, go for it and enjoy warp-free painting!
Alice Baber
Paul Jenkins
The paintings of Paul Jenkins have come to represent the spirit, vitality, and invention of post World War II American abstraction. Employing an unorthodox approach to paint application, Jenkins is as much identified with the process of controlled paint-pouring and canvas manipulation as with the gem-like veils of transparent and translucent color which have characterized his work since the late 1950s. Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri in 1923, Jenkins later moved to Youngstown, Ohio. Drawn to New York, he became a student of Yasuo Kuniyoshi at the Art Students League and ultimately became associated with the Abstract Expressionists, inspired in part by the "cataclysmic challenge of Pollock and the total metaphysical consumption of Mark Tobey." An ongoing interest in Eastern religions and philosophy, the study of the I Ching, along with the writings of Carl Gustav Jung prompted Jenkins' turn toward inward reflection and mysticism which have dominated his aesthetic as well as his life.
Paul Jenkins (b. 1923, Kansas City, Missouri, d. 2012, New York, New York) was an American painter who is celebrated for his dynamic abstractions in oil, acrylic, and enamel. His paintings are characterised by their masterfully controlled, multilayered washes of pigment that meet on canvas in oceanic pools and eddies. While the artist’s work was initially received in the terms of American Abstract Expressionism, his sustained, rigorous inquiries into the physiological and spiritual aspects of colour, what the artist termed its “phenomena,” opened it to new avenues of expression that would outlast numerous movements throughout his six-decade career.
Coming to artistic maturity in New York at Abstract Expressionism’s height, Jenkins befriended many of the movement’s leading figures before decamping to Paris, which would serve as his second base of operations for the rest of his life. In Paris the painter established the conditions for his now-celebrated process, in which pigments are coaxed along the surface of a canvas that has been primed and buffed to a silken plane. By manipulating the angle of the surface on which paints traveled and by guiding their movements with an ivory knife, Jenkins produced a body of work that is striking for the singularity of its maker’s conviction while evidencing his spiritual restlessness and continual seeking.
Phenomena Umbra
1982
Watercolour on paper
31 ¼ x 43 ¼ in. (79.4 x 109.9 cm)
Framed: 33 x 45 ½ in. (83.8 x 115.6 cm)
Phenomena Noh Veil
1969
Acrylic on canvas
39 ⅛ x 39 ⅛ in. (99.1 x 99.1 cm)
Paul Jenkins (1923-2012) is a major artist in post-war abstraction whose work is recognized for its luminous flows of color combining opacity and transparency to both emanate and reflect light. An early pioneer of poured paint, Jenkins worked on paper and primed canvas. His paintings have achieved prominence for the fluidity of their forms as well as their gem-like veils of color which have characterized his work since the 1950s. Full of verve with a profoundly spiritual aspect, his paintings have a natural feeling to them, with rarely any trace of the artist’s hand. “A painting” he said, “should be a world not a thing.”
Jenkins made his vibrant compositions by pouring paint directly onto the canvas, then tilting it so the paint dripped, bled, and pooled into fluid, diaphanous washes that resembled ceramic glazes.
His palettes and methodologies can evoke the experiments of fellow abstract titan Helen Frankenthaler.
Phenomena Emanation of Host,,
1989
Watercolour on paper
43 3/10 × 31 in | 110 × 78.7 cm
Phenomena Set the Compass,
1994
Watercolour on paper
43 3/10 × 31 1/10 in | 110 × 79 cm
“It is a presumption on my part but after all, that is one of the expanding possibilities of Abstract painting: that which makes something felt which is not explicitly seen.”
Louise Giovanelli
https://www.whitecube.com/artists/louise-giovanelli?_gl=11mnftzk_upMQ.._gaMTI4NzU5NzM0Mi4xNzI4OTk4NzEx_ga_69SWDNXKNMMTcyODk5ODcxMC4xLjAuMTcyODk5ODcxMC4wLjAuMA.._ga_LMVZ29E0TN*MTcyODk5ODcxMC4xLjAuMTcyODk5ODcxMC4wLjAuNTkzMDY3MDk1
Reworking and often closely cropping details from paintings, photographs, classical sculpture, architecture and theatre, Giovanelli’s visual motifs traverse series, employing repetition as a leitmotif in order to achieve an augmented sense of reality. Where subjects are repeated, paintings that appear near identical are, however, rendered individual by slight alterations in composition or tone: ‘Repetition has two functions in my work. As a practical learning mechanism and as a psychological and conceptual device.’
An Ex IV, NYC Subway / Frankfurt am Main, 2019
Print on folded papers
20 × 27 1/2 in | 50.8 × 69.9 cm
Edition of 200
Louise Giovanelli
An Ex III, 2019
Oil on canvas
170 x 130 cm | 66 7/8 x 51 1/8 in
Louise Giovanelli
Billyo VI, 2019
Oil on canvas
80 x 50 cm | 31 1/2 x 19 3/4 in
Sam Gillan
Watercolour, 4 1969
Watercolor, and aluminum powder on fiberglass paper 23 3/4 x 18 1/8" (60.3 x 45.9 cm)
Blurring the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and installation, Sam Gilliam wrestles with the physicality of the art object and its relationship to the viewer.
he moved to Washington, DC, during the formation of Color Field painting, which emphasized the use of flat planes of color and novel paint application techniques.
Gilliam soon experimented with color, form, and technique, pouring pigments and folding canvases while still wet.
remove his canvases from their stretchers entirely, and, inspired by laundry on clotheslines, hang them from the ceiling or walls.
Gilliam transformed painting into something sculptural and three-dimensional, disrupting traditional modes of presentation and viewing.
He also incorporated metal forms, alternative materials like yarn and glitter, varied applications of paint, and quilt-inspired patterning into his practice.
“the expressive act of making a mark and hanging it in space is always political. My work is as political as it is formal.”
Sam Gilliam, Green April, 1969,
acrylic on canvas, 98 x 271 x 3 7/8 inches (248.9 x 688.3 x 9.8 cm), Collection of Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland, Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, photography by Lee Thompson.
his lyrical abstractions took on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials.
For over forty years, Bernard Frize has examined what it means to make a painting. Working in series, he has developed diverse protocols in order to undermine his own creative role and thus free his compositions of self-expression. For Frize, paint, resin, brush and canvas are not materials to be mastered, but collaborators with whom he enters into a working relationship. The terms of this partnership may vary from series to series, but ever-constant is the notion that the media itself is equally as important as the hand of the artist in determining the look and feel of a final painting. Subtle in some works and significant in others, the drips, pools, swirls, and blobs of paint found throughout Frize’s large colorful abstractions evidence his anti-auteur relationship to painting. Preferring to raise questions rather than provide answers, Frize invites viewers to consider the implications of process and materials (what is painting) on form and content (what is a painting).
OMENA, 2023
Acrylic and resin on canvas
150 x 130 cm | 59 1/16 x 51 3/16 inch
Unique
Bernard Frize’s paintings are neither narrative nor mutilated, but they owe their creation, in large part, to a kind of sanctioned degeneration. Unruly paint has been allowed to bleed over the artist’s own brushwork, complicating systematic strokes with smudges, swathes and stains whose amorphous hazy forms that suggest various celestial bodies. Managing to appear simultaneously vibrant and on the brink of ruin, the canvas reflects Frize’s complex and ever-evolving relationship to paint, the act of painting and what it means to be a painter.
Helen Frankenthaler
"There are no rules... that is how art is born, that is how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules, that is what invention is about."
has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the twentieth century.
She was eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters and is widely credited for playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting.
Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, she expanded the possibilities of abstract painting, while at times referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways.
Towards a New Climate, 1957
Oil on canvas 70 x 98 in. (177.8 x 248.9 cm)
The Bay, 1963
Acrylic on canvas 80 3/4 x 81 3/4 inches (205 x 208 cm) Detroit Institute of Art, Michigan
A Green Thought in a Green Shade, 1981
Acrylic on canvas 119 x 156 1/2 inches (302.3 x 397.5 cm)
Grey Fireworks, 1982
Acrylic on canvas 72 x 118 1/2 inches (182.9 x 301 cm) Private Collection
Close up, Grey Fireworks, 1982
Untitled, 1962
Oil on paper 19 1/8 x 24 7/8 inches (48.6 x 63.2 cm)
Canal Street XIV, 1987
Acrylic on paper 24 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches (62.2 x 100.3 cm)
Kiss, 2003
Acrylic on paper 8 x 10 inches (20.3 x 25.4 cm)
Cool Summer, 1962
Oil on canvas, 69 ¾ × 120 inches (177.2 × 304.8 cm) (C) 9018 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Nature Abhors a Vaccum, 1973
Acrylic on canvas, 103 ½ × 112 inches (262.9 x 284.5 cm), National Gallery of Art, Washington, © 2018 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation,
Syzygy, 1987
Acrylic on canvas, 88 / X 59 ½ inches (224.2 x 151.1 cm)| © 2018 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, inc. Artists kiants society Aro. New york
A line, color, shapes, spaces, all do one thing for and within themselves, and yet do something else, in relation to everything that is going on within the four sides [of the canvas]. A line is a line, but [also] is a color. . . . It does this here, but that there. The canvas surface is flat and yet the space extends for miles. What a lie, what trickery—how beautiful is the very idea of painting. —Helen Frankenthaler
End of Summer, 1995
Acrylic on paper, 78 × 78 inches (198.1 × 198.1 cm) 9094 1een Trankentna pr rAlinearan Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Untitled, 1996
Acrylic and charcoal on paper, 40 ¼ × 60 ⅛ inches (102.2 × 152.7 cm) © 2024 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New
“I’ve always worked on paper,” she noted in 1996, “but not conceived on the scale of my canvases. . . . The shift was a tremendous move for me.”
The paintings in the exhibition reveal her exploration of the material and compositional possibilities of working on paper: new kinds of chromatic juxtapositions and painterly gestures, often set down on a smoother surface than canvas.
At several earlier moments in her career, Frankenthaler had added more visibly dense brushstrokes and applications of pigment to the revolutionary soak-stain technique she had pioneered in the early 1950s. This approach became a constant in her late compositions. After working directly on the floor during the first four decades of her career, she began painting on large, waist-high tabletops, a concession to her age; the turn to painting on paper also coincided with her increased activity in printmaking.
"My pictures are full of climates, abstract climates, and not nature per se. But a feeling. And the feeling of an order that is associated more with nature. Nature in seasons, maybe; but nature in, well, an order. And I think art itself is order out of chaos." —Helen Frankenthaler
In her pioneering work of the 1950s, inspired by Jackson Pollock, Frankenthaler had poured both linear tracks and spreading areas of thinned paint onto unprimed canvas.
Challenged the established norms of brushwork and control. By allowing the paint to seep and bleed into the fabric, she embraced the unpredictable nature of the medium and introduced an element of spontaneity and freedom into her process. This unleashed a dynamic interplay of colours and forms, creating works that were vibrant, alive, and deeply expressive.
Hughie O'Donoghue
Born in Manchester, Hughie O’Donoghue now lives and works in rural Ireland. O’Donoghue has internationally since 1982 and is considered one of the leading painters of his generation. His work is represented in public collections, including the National Gallery, London, the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester and the Arts Council of England. The solo exhibition ‘Hughie O’Donoghue: Recent Paintings and Selected Works from the American Ireland Fund Donation’ was held at IMMA in 2009
Laocoon, 2003
Medium: Oil on linen canvas in 3 panels
Dimensions: Unframed, 305 x 468 cm
O’Donoghue uses figuration and abstraction to explore themes of human identity, memory, and experience; and draws on history, mythology, and personal records to create works that resonate with emotional intensity.
Fallen Elm (Kilfane) Oil on board, 71 x 122cm (28 x 48") Signed, inscribed and dated 2007/'8 verso
Evening Kilfane, Co. Kilkenny Oil on canvas, 68 x 104cm (26¾ x 41") Signed; signed inscribed and dated 2007 verso
His work is abstract in style, presenting the human body as distorted and blurred forms, drawn in thick and heavy brushstrokes. He often applies numerous layers of paint, or includes photographs or documentary sources within the canvas, covered in more paint.
The surfaces of his canvas are full of texture, in which the material takes paramount importance
This process of layering reflects O'Donoghue's interest in engaging with historical narratives, often personal in nature, so that he can express the serial form of experience and memory.
"painting is archaeology in reverse"
“The colours in my paintings are also intense, but in my work there’s never only one reason for why something is the way it is. I suppose I deliberately court the intensity of colour to mirror the intensity of feeling that comes with memory.
fascinated by the passing of time
For him, painting is a form of both archaeology and remembrance
Exhibition
23rd of October
They have a private collection upstairs, They also have on going o'Malley collection that is on show.
Ciara Roche, The 'honeymoon' exhibition
12th oct- 1st Dec
This exhibition takes place in there largest area, the main gallery.
Butler Gallery is very pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Wexford-born artist Ciara Roche. This is the artist’s first large-scale museum exhibition in Ireland.
This suite of paintings on canvas and paper refer to domestic scenes and public places with source imagery derived from the artist’s own photography, film stills and found imagery. Roche continues to explore representational image-making using wet and quickly applied oil paint to create a sense of luminosity and movement on the surface. The paintings explore places and themes that range from exclusive anonymous hotels to empty 24-hour cafés.
For this exhibition, Roche has embraced new challenges and created her largest paintings to date. The process, she says, was akin to learning a new language. The paintings were realised by translating her smaller sketchbook sized works onto a substantially larger framework. Figuring out materials and brushes that worked well for this new format took a while to master but the resultant paintings have been achieved with great skill and an acute awareness on how far to push things.
The Late Lounge, Roche’s largest painting to date, is both an interior and a window out to a city scape. We are invited to step into a high end restaurant, or perhaps it is a bar, complete with grand piano, and insulated against what might be happening in a corporate blue city beyond. Glass Table, like many of the paintings on view, presents more questions than answers: who sits here and what schemes are conjured up around this glass table? People are purposely missing from these paintings; the viewer is encouraged to insert themselves into the scene and create their own narrative.
There is frequently an unease in Roche’s paintings, a sort of critique of this hugely capitalistic world we live in. She is often struck by the dark side of scenarios and says that her solution is ‘to paint those fears, acknowledging the things that might happen, like exploring different versions of my life’. Viewing the works in this exhibition is like entering an uncanny world of suspense made up of light and shadow. These lushly rendered paintings, either small or large, capture timeless moments for the viewer to ponder. The rewards are wonderful.
curated by: Claire Keegan
"I don't paint people into my paintings because if I were to put a figure in them, then it would feel like the viewers couldn't go in and imagine themselves in that space... I like the idea of being able to let your mind wander and fill in the empty spaces".
Alice baber
“When I first conceive of a painting, I must feel it, I hear it, I taste it, and I want to eat it. I start from the driving force of color (color hunger); then comes to a second color to provide light, luminous light. It will be the glow to reinforce the first color. I then discover the need of one, two, three, or more colors which will indicate and make movement, establish the psychodynamic balance in midair, allow freedom to take place, add weight at the top and bottom of painting, and create mythical whirlpools between larger forms.”
Alice Baber, Color, 1972
Alice Baber (1928-1982) was an American abstract expressionist painter, best known for the organic, biomorphic forms she painted using a staining technique which allowed her to explore pure color and elicit a sense of radiant light.
Baber’s stylistic development during the period between 1958 and the mid-1970s is characterized by a series of experiments with color and technique. Having turned to abstraction in 1958, she began exploring a monochromatic approach to painting, primarily using shades of red. By 1960 Baber came to add yellows, greens, and lavender to her work. She gradually incorporated a growing variety of colors into her canvases, a process that reached its hiatus by the mid 1970s when she finally introduced black to her work, achieving a new range of effects and subtleties.
Her evolving approach to painting is also characterized by her choice of materials. In the first half of the 1950s she worked primarily in oil, but soon began to dilute her paint in order to emphasize the different shades of color, eventually expanding her practice to include also acrylic on canvas and watercolors on paper as alternatives to oil. Watercolors in particular lent themselves more easily to her growing interest in transparency and luminosity, as well as her interests in joining light and color in a kinetic fusion. Baber also worked with acrylic. Working in both mediums in parallel led to discoveries that altered the course of Baber’s painting, a method of ‘sinking’ (or ‘staining’) and ‘lifting’ to create abstract, organic forms – a visual style that has since become her signature. Color would remain central to the artist’s practice throughout her career, a theme on which she wrote at length in several publications, and which became the subject of exhibitions the artist curated, including Color Forum, a large-scale group exhibition held at the University of Texas, Austin, 1972.
Post-war feminist artist and lithographer Alice Baber produced brilliantly colored abstract expressionist oil and watercolor paintings by staining her canvases with rounded biomorphic forms. Using a technique of pouringdiluted oil paint onto a canvas in layers, she sometimes experimented with variations of a single hue and at other times created a purposeful interplay of different tones, as in The Song of the Wind (1977). Baber referred to her attempts to relay feelings through color as a “color hunger,” and exploration of “the infinite range of possibilities.” A member of the cooperative March Gallery in downtown New York, where she held her first solo exhibition in 1958, Baber was married to noted Abstract Expressionist painter Paul Jenkins. Baber’s work can be found in the collections of the Met, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Wheel of Jaguar, 1982
Watercolor on Paper 12 × 11 in | 30.5 × 27.9 cm
The Light Inside the Mountain, 1978
Oil on canvas 33 × 55 in | 83.8 × 139.7 cm
Just Arrived, 1962
Oil on canvas 57 × 44 in | 144.8 × 111.8 cm
UNTITLED
watercolor on paper, 22 x 30 IN unframed, 33.5 x 41.5 IN unframed
