Joan Mitchell Center Artist in Residency Redux

We moved into our studios on March 2nd, and moved out 2 weeks later. It was the right thing to do, and absolutely necessary. After New Orleans spent a couple of months in Phase 2 and colleges started to reopen for the fall semester, JMC gave us a second chance, and we moved back the day after Labor Day. This time all the residents were local artists, and national artists were offered deferral until 2021.

I had never painted on linen before, and I thought this would be the time to finally try it out. I truly hate painting on stretched cotton canvases with passion, and I ordered oil primed linen canvas on a large roll so that I could directly tape it onto the expansive walls of my JMC studio. The two images above are about 20"x15" each that I started as a warm-up, and I was pleasantly surprised how receptive the surface was, even with my aggressive reduction method with brayers. 

Underpainting for 30"x60" landscape with train tracks, oil on linen

Oil primer must be the key, since it is less absorbent than acrylic primers. When scraping, wiping, and scratching the paint layers, there is nothing more annoying than absorbent surfaces like acrylic primed canvas. That was the main reason I had to switch to painting on solid, non-absorbent wooden panels. 

I love painting on wooden panels but it's just extremely time consuming to cradle, prime, and gesso... I spend more time building them than actually painting on them. And they are heavy, they warp, and they pile up in my tiny shotgun house. 

Now I just have to find a way to make a shit ton of money so that I can paint exclusively on linen.

Time to build more cradled panels!