scumble

Recording in darkness, the artist immerses himself in the experience, and endeavors to encapsulate his impressions into visual form, translating them into strokes, dashes and scumbles.

One of the real excitements is coming to understand just how varied Ruisdael's technique could be: here he sponges, there he scumbles. He modulated his brush with sufficient sensitivity to distinguish a beech from an oak leaf.

The base coat (ie, the layer of paint underneath the finished glaze) should be a mid-sheen finish for both acrylic and oil-based scumbles. Matt finishes would absorb the colour making it difficult to wipe off if you made a mistake, and speeding up the drying time.

The scruffy palimpsestic surfaces of the early paintings, scored and mottled, smooth into planes of uncadenced blues, tans, yellows and pinks California hues -while the figures graduate ftom the primitive and childlike scumbles to blander and more naturalistic figures, almost always amusing and fondly treated.

Grainy scumbles activate its surface as a small painted square in each corner pronounces the boundaries of that surface, while a line bifurcating the image and a cutout tab atop the line indicate a horizon--except that the tab has been peeled back and affixed to the canvas, reasserting its flatness.