Mixed Media:Abstract, Informal Painting with Materials

Contemporary Art with Rich Texture

Design pictures with material

My paintings are created not only with a brush, palette knife, sponge, or even a scratching needle, but also with patience—and a deep love for the material. Whether it’s ash, pigments, ground stone, wax, paper, coffee, or charcoal: each of these materials brings its own language, its own texture, and a life of its own. This gives my work a materiality and tactile quality that pure acrylic or oil paint can never achieve.

I apply paint and materials very wet to the surface and let the drying process play a part in shaping the final design. This requires patience—and sometimes courage, because the materials sometimes react quite differently than I had expected. For me, that is precisely where the appeal lies: in allowing the unpredictable to happen, in a dialogue with the surface that is never entirely under my control.

What fascinates me most is when my paintings appear raw and textural—when it looks as though all that material splendor is merely resting loosely on the canvas and might fall off at any moment. An illusion, of course, because every grain, every texture is firmly bonded to the surface. Yet it is precisely this tension between apparent fragility and actual durability that drives me time and time again.

Art historian Dr. Ingrid Gardill wrote two highly recommended articles for my catalogs about the impact of my “material paintings.” Feel free to read them now:
Abstract painting with pigments and material in mixed media (mixed media)