Recycling a painting

Painting by Vicky Christensen, mixed media on 16 X 12 inch canvas 

This painting has been recycled more than once. In fact I can't recall its first iteration. In any case, a few months ago, after buying stencils and watching a Chris Cozen video I made my first stab at mixed media. I gessoed over an old painting and gave it a little texture by pressing some stencils into the gesso. Then I slapped on some color, added a few stencils and called it a day. It has been sitting around since. Finally this week I decided to add some more layers and I give it a new life.

In case you are wondering, this is what it used to look like:

Imagine it rotated a quarter turn followed by layers of stencils and glazes.

What is it?

Painting by Vicky Christensen, acrylic on 16 X 20 inch canvas 

For this painting I started by dragging paint across the canvas with deli sheets. That was followed by stencils, stamps and splatters. As so often happens, I intended to make flowers but instead it evolved into what you see above. Is it cross sections of exotic fruit or painted stones? It's whatever your imagination says it is.

When I was outlining the shapes I grabbed a tube of cerulean blue and what I thought was magenta. The 'magenta' was darker than I expected and the tints it was making weren't what I expected but I was liking the results so I kept painting. It wasn't until I went back to do a bit of glazing that I discovered the 'magenta' was actually prism violet. I'm happy I grabbed the 'wrong' color by mistake!

Watery Sunset

Painting by Vicky Christensen, mixed media on 20 x 16 inch canvas 

This painting is another experiment with lots of layers. I wish I had taken a photo at each phase. Suffice it to say that the finished piece looks nothing like the beginnings.

I topped this one off with a layer of 'faux encaustic' that was made from a recipe in Sandra Duran Wilson's Acrylic Painting for Encaustic Effects. I didn't go very thick with the layer.

Painted Deli Wrap Collage

Painting by Vicky Christensen, mixed media on 16 X 20 inch canvas 

I bought Sandra Duran Wilson's Acrylic Painting for Encaustic Effects because I love her artwork and wanted to learn some of her techniques. One of her examples begins with spreading globs of fluid acrylics on a substrate using deli sheets, then using the resulting deli sheets for collage elements. I borrowed that idea for this painting. I should note that Sandra's faux encaustic paintings also include a final layer of a mixture of gloss and matte gel to give the appearance of the wax surface of an encaustic painting, but I chose to omit that step on this painting.

High flow glow

Painting by Vicky Christensen, mixed media on 16 X 20 inch canvas 

This painting started with splashes of high flow acrylics. Then I decided to try dropping alcohol into the paint to make some blooms. I'm an impatient person and probably didn't catch the paint at the right moment, so the blooms were pretty subdued. But then I decided it might be fun to embellish what the alcohol did with a mixture of titan buff and Liquitex iridescent medium. After seeing the shimmer the iridescent circles added, I just had to add more bling with some stencils and glass bead gel. Today I added some glazes and finished with a few more iridescent circles.

Traffic circles and cul-de-sacs

Painting by Vicky Christensen, acrylic on 20 x 16 inch canvas 

This new painting reminds me of aerial photos of suburban neighborhoods.  Traffic circles have become really popular here in Minnesota. Some of them make sense, and sometimes they put them in pretty unlikely spots. And it's a concept that confuses a lot of drivers. So this is my homage.