Studio

Drawing Table
I’ve always loved experimenting, so I’ve explored many different techniques and media including graphite, pen & ink, etching, watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, oil, acrylic, digital (Photoshop, Illustrator, & Flash), polymer clay, fiber, found objects and collage. I’ve enjoyed them all and learned much from each, and I still have a restless urge to try new techniques. But most of my gallery work these days is a combination of collage and acrylic. Above is a picture of my drawing table set-up. You can see my palette, which I keep in an old tin that can be covered to slow drying, and a few jars of pre-mixed colors of Golden Fluid Acrylic, my favorite paint ever. You can also see the teeny-tiny brushes I love, along with some bigger ones I use mainly for backgrounds and glazes. Just visible at the lower left is the edge of a printed collage piece, glazed with translucent color in preparation for painting.
My studio is stuffed with old books and papers that I’ve found mainly at our local flea market. I especially love 19th-century textbooks and instruction manuals, which can often be had for a dollar or two. I scan texts and sometimes maps and illustrations from these sources, them print them archivally to use as a collage base for my paintings. You can see the way I incorporate these elements in Process.