Page 48 - WTPVolI Vol.#4

“Ilike to paint landscapes— urban, suburban, and shoreline in an ex-
pressionist gestural style, using lots of oil paint, and mainly palette knives and big, cheap hard- ware store brushes. I need both structure and lots of color in an image that strikes me. I use
a lot of drips and flung slashes of paint to help organize and unify the space of the canvas, while keeping to a (fairly) recognizable subject matter. Drips and flung paint creates vibrating color con- trasts in a contemporary way—I admire the clas- sic impressionists tremendously, but I just can’t imagine spending all that time futzing with tiny brushes and little dots. Of course by the time I’m done with a work, there are usually multiple lay- ers and it takes at least as long. But after seeing Richard Diebenkorn and Willem de Kooning and Joan Mitchell, I just feel the need to work with the paint that way.”
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Harlem River Bridge Spring
oil on canvas 36'' x 48''
helen cantRell