The Drawing Ground series represents an exploration in building surface with Connecticut quartz and granite foraged from various sites around my studio and up in the Berkshires. A studio ball mill gives me the ability to self-pulverize, and levigate (wash) these hard minerals for the initial stages of my work.
I am physically “drawing ground” from the earth and, in some cases, the foundational grounds of the work build in such a way to reveal surfaces that appear to look “drawn”. This occurs through a process of layering and washing back layers of diverse pigment particles. I am carefully guiding the slow build-up of marks on the bottom surface so that they are intentionally multi-directional: a method I call educated or contolled chance. I have no interest in using commercial texture grounds that (in my experience) blindly build the surface as decorative elements.
I no longer use toxic reds (cinnabar, vermillion, cadmium) in my studio, so the vibrant reds in this series are synthetic, man-made and aluminum based.