Paint-carving: beyond sgraffito
DATE
Saturday
TIME
2:00
5
LOCATION
Harriet Hill's
Instructor
Harriet Hill
I’m intense, and so is my art. I distill details. My artwork is bold, bright, filled with basic shapes, the foundation of everything we see. I spent 18 years living in Africa and its earthiness, saturation, designs and rhythms shaped me. I love the fabrics, the batiks, the powerful geometric symbols. While in Africa, I helped people value their identity through their language. Now I’m doing this for myself through my artwork. I like my paint thick and smooth, with clean lines, so I mix it with cold wax, spread and smooth it with palette knives, and clean the edges with a brush dipped in turps. I find great joy in layering contrastive colors, one on top of the other and then carving a design into the paint that lets the bottom color show through. I know it’s done when it shouts at me.
About the Demonstration
As I follow my creative instincts, I discovered that I love thick luscious layers of bright paint in abstract geometric designs. Initially, I scratched at the paint to uncover contrastive layers beneath. There’s a name for it: sgraffito. My curiosity led me to explore what would happen if I went beyond scratching to full-on carving. I got out my lino-cutting tools and began carving—beyond Sgraffito. Come to my demo to see the process of laying down thick layers of paint and cold wax and then carving a design into the design.