Growing a Painting/ GC Myers

This is a new piece that I recently finished that I’m calling Escape Route, a fairly large painting, a 24″ by 48″ canvas.  I paint in two different styles, one more wet and transparent that is about putting paint on the surface then removing it until the desired color and tone are reached  and the other more traditional in that the paint is is added in layers, one upon another.  The wet method I call reductive and is basically done from light to dark.  The other I call additive and generally goes from dark to light. This painting is in the additive method.

I put together a short film that shows the progress through the steps of my process.  The painting start with a canvas that is first trated with layers of gesso which give it a distinct texture then covered with a layer of black paint.  From there I proceed by blocking in the composition with an inital layer of red oxide then go from there into building the final product.  There are a lot of decisions that go into this that I’m not discussing here, decisions that take place within seconds, each determining the direction of the whole piece.  Hopefully, this film will give an idea of  these decision and  how the painting grows.