Mostly Ups, Some Downs Painting

"Mostly Ups, Some Downs" Triptych: three panels, 36 x 24 inches each acrylic and ink on canvas 2014 Blake Brasher This is an original abstract painting I made at Industry Lab in Cambridge during my time as Artist in Residence there. It is painted on three high quality, 3/4 inch deep gallery wrapped canvases with wires installed in the back for easy hanging. The edges are painted dark yellow with drip marks showing, which I think are nice because they help tell the story of how the painting was made. This painting was completed on March 21, 2014. This is a heavily layered composition. I started with a quick underpainting in acrylic. When the underpainting was partially dry I smeared a thick layer of acrylic gloss gel over the entire surface using a tool not unlike a rubber spatula. The process is similar to frosting a cake. Gloss gel is a thick milky goo that dries clear and hard and shiny. Smearing it over the partially wet underpainting causes it to pick up some of the pigment from the underpainting and pull it along in wispy tendrils. Next I added some ink to the wet gloss gel. I used ink droppers and drew their tips through the gel, leaving channels behind that filled with ink as I squeezed the dropper bulb. In some cases I would only squeeze ink into parts of the resulting channels, leaving the channels empty and waiting to be filled. I also dripped ink onto the surface of the gel in places I wanted the color to spread without forming lines. That's how I got the nice bright pinks and yellows in this paintings. The blues, reds, and whites were more drawn in. After the inks were applied I sprayed the canvas with a fine mist of water. The water breaks the surface tension of the ink and makes it spread out. It also filled up the empty channels and formed little pools in areas were the gel build up was lower than the rest of the painting. As the water spread it took the pigment in the ink with it and when pools of pigment meet they mix and form nice gradients. The title of this painting is inspired by the fact that all of the ordinary matter in our universe, the stuff that makes up you and me and elephants and pianos, rocket ships and silver quarters, is mostly made of up quarks, and some down quarks.

Painting:Acrylic on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:74 W x 36 H x 0.8 D in

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