This gallery picks up where Gallery Two left off with the four 24 inch x 36 inch photo printed canvases. The images printed on those canvases were details of an acrylic on Bristol painting I had previously done, which itself was based on photos I had printed of a digitally altered image from the work Twinning.

The images here show almost each and every step in the painting process. 

My intention was to use the printed canvas as a starting point; an image derived from other images, which would then spur yet another image. Bits and pieces of the history of the painting would peek through. Parts of the original, cheap reproduction photo-canvas would remain visible. 

Throughout the painting I often referred to it as "bad hotel art". The cheap, generic reproductions with the machine applied texture one might find in a bad hotel. My job was to bring the individuality of the painting back to something that could have been just another generic, non-threatening abstract painting. I wanted to combine those four canvases into a single, whole painting.

I knew this would involve many layers. And I wanted the bottom layer, the printed canvas, to still have some presence. So my first step was to seal the canvas with a clear, acrylic medium. I chose to give the otherwise thin, cheap, canvas a texture, the flourish of 'artistic brushstrokes' that had nothing to do with the painting pictured beneath them. In this way, much like the after painting one might find on a printed reproduction of a painting...made by machine or man that final layer has little to do with the reality of the painting beneath, other than to give the viewer/collector/consumer the impression they are in possession of a 'real' painting.

The next layers added to the canvas were acrylic paint. First marks which were 'gestural' and 'painterly'. These were followed by the beginnings of the 'pixelation'. Flat, semi-opaque squares and rectangles in flesh tones. After building these up to a certain point, I sanded them down. The first layer of texture began to be revealed.

Eventually I moved on to layers of thinly glazed oil paint, but keeping to the squares and rectangles inspired by the pixelation of the photos. The color palette also remained tied to those photos. 

Sanding occurred at some point along the way. 

As the painting slowly took shape the squares dominated. About mid-way it seemed to have gone further in the direction towards the "bad hotel art" than away from it. 

It was time to solidify.

Glazes were applied to larger areas of the paintings. A body began to emerge. There remained a translucent quality. 

Another layer of the identity began to pop out of the body. Where the colors of the body were very fleshy and natural, this body was a loud and artificial structure which had planted itself on top. 

And still bits and pieces of the layers beneath shine through.