Working Process

video clips of painting surfaces

Kellyann Burns New York City 2007 running time 6:43 (quicktime 9mb)

My painting surface is mounted directly to the wall allowing the entire plane to be worked; the edges are as important to me as the rest of the painting and given equal emphasis. For this reason I think of my canvases as self-framed, the stretched canvas with its beveled edges infer ghost frames reminiscent of the 19th century.

I apply the pigment with a metal spatula that is pulled or scraped over the canvas, leaving masked or dripped pigment as evidence of this process. The physicality of the layers that reveal themselves upon the painting’s surface conjures up a sculptural gravity and presence in color and form. I visualize them as three-dimensional works of art that have been flattened or squashed.

Sandpaper is as important a tool to me as my brushes and pallet knives. What I remove from my canvases is as subtly controlled as the pigments and textures I apply. Every layer of paint is sanded, allowing the colors of previous layers to be exposed, and I control the degree to which these layers are revealed by the pressure and intensity of the sanding. Through this process, a dense, smooth surface emerges (too subtle to be truly appreciated in photographic and digital reproductions) which is an integral part of my finished work. The result is an extremely tactile surface, accentuated with the various textures of brush strokes and assorted grades of sandpaper.

The color of the pigment changes when sanded and this is how I challenge and exploit the materials. Pigment sanded becomes matt and translucent while pigment not sanded, glossy and opaque. Because of these qualities I am able to manipulate extremely subtle changes in light both within and reflecting from the painting.

With each piece of art I create, I make a conscious decision to challenge myself with compositions so that they work faithfully in any direction. Therefore, while I am composing my paintings I continually turn the canvas, shifting its polarity, questioning its center of balance. My intention is always, that the painting work successfully when displayed in any of its four rotated positions.

Built up of many layers, through additions and subtractions, my paintings speak of order and form, gradually uniting until a harmony is realized between the materials and the process by which they were fashioned. It is the Spectator’s eyes that add the final layer, by viewing. And the final subtraction too, by what ever their memory chooses to remember.

Painting
My paintings seeks to evoke the beauty of erosion: the physical deterioration and wearing away of man’s forms over time through the action of nature’s hand.

While at first glance my paintings may seem hard edge abstractions, in fact they are made up of as many as forty layers of pigment that I reveal by sanding, scraping, and bruising the painting’s surface in a manner that simulates both erosion and the passage of time. The hard edge forms in my compositions suggest the modern world, and the areas of sanded pigment a more ancient world. Through their juxtaposition, viewers get some understanding of how Nature’s elements enhance and transform our world.

My process of wearing away layers of pigment allows me to expose forgotten textures, forms and colors in quest of an aesthetic balance and an artistic truth. The uppermost layer of the painting is not necessarily the primary or dominant layer, because there is always the suggestion that one day it, too, will be worn away, or be covered by another layer, and that its dominance at any particular moment of looking is only a matter of chance.

My paintings encourage viewers to contemplate both the nature of time and their own place in its passage. My intention is to suggest something of time’s compression: how even though we live in the present, we are capable of reflecting upon the past and imaging the future. Everything in time is transient, but all of time can be simultaneous.


Collage
Sandpaper – a tool intrinsic to my painting method - became the inspiration for my collages. The coarse paper with its embedded pigment creates a rich, reverberating color and it is this unique tactile surface that formed the base pallet for my collages.

My collages are composed of abstract, geometric, and organic shapes, suspended in pools of color, with patterns and sculptural forms to define the composition. Often they take on a quilt like quality and I exploit this likeness by incorporating pieces of fabric in the work – rags also reconstituted from my painting method.

It is the fertilization of one art form collage through the need to utilize discarded material from a different art form painting that inspires and continues to inspire my creative expression.

Tanagrams
The title of these most recent collage forms reference the traditional Chinese Tangram puzzle.

When composing these collages I move shapes and colors around until a balanced form emerges, much like finding the solution to a puzzle. I liken these simple form collages to characters on a stage. Each interacts on the paper differently, depending where it is placed and its proximity to other shapes, colors and negative space. Both the process and the finished work have a playful, theatrical quality. 

The unique tactile surfaces of these collages are created from the discarded materials I use in my painting method: Sandpaper, used to sand my paintings surface, is richly embedded with colored pigments. Painting rags, stained and soaked, paint peeking through different patterns existent on the original fabric, redefining the ephemera as a fertile palate from which my Tangram collages bloom.

Drawing
The subject of my drawings is the making of the mark.

I draw by repeatedly making marks with graphite or charcoal that gradually unite, through an intuitive process, into patterns and shapes. Sometimes, as the pieces evolve, the marks will end abruptly, creating a shape with a distinct edge. Other times, the marks form repeating patterns that may intersect or may be separated by voids. Although I sometimes allow the negative space of these voids to remain, I often transform them into areas of dense darkness, so that the forms created by my markings may emerge more clearly.

As with my painting, the “process” itself is what inspires me. I am fascinated by the way forms emerge organically out of the simple act of making marks on paper. I make a conscious effort to be open to these emerging forms, while at the same time being alert to their interactions and to the overall composition of the drawing.