ACRYLIC WASTE, 2019 – ongoing

Acrylic, 6B pencil on 80lb paper, size varies from 6 x 8 in. to 3 x 7 ft.

This work developed from my Art classrooms.  On any given day, I cleaned and removed whole pieces of dried acrylic from student’s palettes. Rather than putting them in the garbage, I arranged the pieces in my sketchbook pages. Eventually, I made marks around them in soft pencil, this unified the many pieces. The dried acrylic suggested to me both the remnants of labor and an index of painting. The energy of the graphite line leaves a trace of the actual work involved. I explored this further outside the classroom, mixing paint and layering colors  and experimenting with color, textures, and scale.