Looking back to Fall 2016 you may recall the work Good Witches of the Between was begun as a collaboration between myself and Petra Nimm. Most of the work -the making- was and has been done by me, with input to the process by Petra. Both the large painting-collage on paper and the oil painting on canvas did involve very brief episodes of Petra taking brush in hand and physically re-directing the painting; and in Part Five Franz became involved through staging an intervention of his own with the canvas.
Returning to the idea of Part Three, printing out detail digital photographs of the larger painting-collage on paper in process and then reworking them with watercolor and other water-based paints, in that group with the additional aspect of collage and completing the picture in the space of the page to which the photograph was adhered, in Part Six I again printed detail digital photographs, this time of the oil painting on canvas in process.
The result shown below is a group of ten paintings on 9 inch x 12 inch [22.5 cm x 30 cm] Bristol paper. Two digital photos were selected to be printed using a standard inkjet printer on the paper; nine images are the same image and the tenth is a slightly different cropping of the same area of the painting as shown in the other image. The materials used in addition to the paper and the inkjet ink were matte acrylic medium, acrylic gesso, water, India ink, and gouache.
The intent of this group of paintings was to begin using some of what I have learned from Petra’s approach to painting to this body of work we are creating collaboratively. It is important to clarify that it was I, not Petra, who made these ten painting. I used my own tools and materials as opposed to the paints and tools reserved only for her use, I was set up working in my own table space in the studio -the space only I work at. Unlike my usual routine of changing into ‘studio clothes’ I remained in my daily street clothes, the thought being by not dressing as ‘Robyn the painter’ I might in someway distance myself from the me who is usually present when I paint, instead creating a more open and ‘relaxed’ atmosphere of just doing as ‘Robyn’. Finally, three other important items to note; first, as myself I painted with my right hand; second, while the music selection was a random selection of artists similar to who Petra listens to generated by a Spotify radio station; third, a large portion of the time spent on this group was done in the evening, after dinner, with the presence of three other people entering into the studio, discussing their day and other family matters.
Here are the paintings, scanned on the printer from which they were originally printed.