Title: Lush
Price: $100.00
Size: 12.25″ x 12.25″ x 1″
Year: 2017
Lush was created using grout and acrylic paint on canvas board. It comes framed in black without glass.
The Story:
Lush is a highly textured, abstract painting that was born out of the need to balance out my wall at Artomatic 2017. I knew I was going to curate my space by color. I realized quickly that I haven’t created anything green in a while. Oddly I had wanted to for months (since a shade of green is Pantone’s color of the year for 2017) but couldn’t quite find the inspiration. Well, nothing creates inspiration faster than a deadline.
The texture on this canvas is sanded grout. Yes, the exact kind of grout you use on tile. In this case my bathroom needed a bit of tile repair work and we discovered that they don’t sell small tubs of grout. Rather than let a big tub of grout go to waste, I decided to put it to use here (and a few other pieces).
After coating the canvas board (and half my studio) in a generous coating a grout, I used a piece of plastic wrap (from said canvas board) to create an uneven texture. It needed a full 24 hours to fully cure. Once it was dry I initially dyed the grout with ink. 24 hours later, I wasn’t thrilled with the results, especially since I went too heavy on the blue & too light on the green. Rather than scrap the piece, I coated in in layer upon layer of acrylic paint. Using another piece of discarded plastic wrap, I swept the paint in vertical stripes. I let the canvas board dry vertically so excess paint would run off. This also created a bit of unevenness to the lines.
The moral of this story is: don’t waste things, turn them in to art! The grout would have just slowly hardened & been tossed in a landfill but art saved that from happening. The plastic wrap that protected my canvas board was given a second life too. Anything can be art, you just need to think differently about the material.