SUMMER II Drawing

The piece comes with hanging, doesn't need a frame and is signed in the picture as on the back. Summer II is a mixed media piece including a digital print (professional high quality lightfast ink), inks, shellack inks, charcoal and oils on acrylic colour on vintage wood, sealed with boiled linseed oil. It is a new approach on a mixed media (analogue) drawing on paper I've done 2015. I've worked on the print with several layers and different medias as ink and oil painting colour. I love transferring my own drawings on specially prepared old wood pieces. I prepare my own pictures, their digital data and the wood all by myself. I continue working on the prints, so they are very different from the works on paper: They become unique new originals, not only because they play with the individual structure, signs of age and abrasion of the wood, as holes from nails or stones and cracks, but also because I take very different approaches on them. All the steps behind this mixed media piece: In the beginning of this piece, I browsed on the internet for a face or view that might stimulate my imagination, which is often my first step in developing a new portrait. I need to feel a promise of where it may go; a sizzling, a crackling in my senses. There were portrait photos of passersby in New York this time, and with them this beauty who was both a bit shy and proud and had an interesting chin and cheekbones. I've started with her, made her more proud and vibrant and through drawing and painting her, she became more and more an allegory of summer in town. It's been summer when I drew her, and a hot one (2015). She became my resemblance; hot, also sexy, strong, totally independent, self-sufficient, demanding. The original work on paper measures 70x100cm and is made with inks, shellac inks, wooden pencils and graphite on Fabriano Artistico Water Colour Paper 600gr / qm. You can see the first version on paper for comparison here. SUMMER II is one of my first pictures where I started to play with a reproduction of one of my works on wood and making something new, outstanding from it. I call them Summer's stories: All different aspects of this first inspiration. As my first version was reduced to being open, going on with her leaves me with many opportunities. With my works on paper, I often get too cautious (in my self-unassured opinion), as no single stroke or line can be taken back (it's also why I really love to work on paper, it's honest and I can't possibly cheat but have to grow on my deeds). Here, I can't take anything back either, but I can play in other ways: The surface (not the smooth, plain white paper anymore) is roughened, bears all the marks of the old wood and it's own characteristics. It's an additional element that wants to be used and shares its surprises only after having it printed: marks, cracks and wooden eyes in locations I could not all foresee or avoid, for example. When a picture is freshly printed on wood, it may be a representation of the picture I've drawn, but it's not yet a new artwork standing on its own. That's just the moment when my work begins anew. Sometimes pictures develop to something totally new. It's a journey I'm loving to take. Sometimes I already know where I'm heading to, sometimes I start with details that lead to something or I start with an experiment forcing myself to leave my comfort zone. Curiosity, learning and changing are, in my opinion, the most important deals in life, the real reasons of life itself. My art is either about this: capturing a moment, and then maybe changing or transforming it; or about captured thoughts, beauties, surreal ideas; my own history, identity or monologues; or about aspects or events of our world we shouldn't deny or forget. Always, my works are a celebration of life, though they may be sometimes about fears or insecurities; we can conquer not all of life's incidents, but our own fears or anger, and we can grow on them.