c. michael wiswell

How does Michael Wiswell paint his paintings?

It’s hard to keep a secret when you don’t keep it a secret. Something I suppose I should have done but I haven’t, so here it is:

I start with a gesso ground just like the old masters. Then I paint in very thin glazes just like the old masters. BUT, unlike the old masters, I am using acrylic paint. It’s plastic! And when it dries, you can distress the surface in a way that you can’t with oil based paint. At least, not with sandpaper! One sands the entire surface of the dry painting until the layers below start to show though. The variegation occurs when the water resist pattern dries. All these very thin layers of paint combine to make a matrix of pigment particles suspended in translucent medium.

When light enters the matrix, some of it is reflected, some of it is refracted, it gives the eye two kinds of light to interpret. I think this gives it further depth. This depth may also be amplified by the scratches in the paint enabling one to see through the layers above to the layers below.

How did I get such an idea….to sand the acrylic paint? I was visiting a high school art teacher. I told her I was using acrylics. She suggested I use what I thought I heard was “sandpaper.” So in my senior year (1969) at the University of Washington I started using sandpaper and have used it ever since. Years later, I visited this teacher, now in her eighties, I mentioned the sandpaper. She paused for a moment then said, “I didn’t say sandpaper, I said sand.”

As for the color: I mix all my colors from alizarin crimson (red), pthalo blue, cadmium yellow, white and black. Each area of color rotates from layer to layer. A red rock, becomes a blue rock then a yellow rock. A blue background becomes a yellow background and then a red background. The combination of layered colors, water resist and sanding, produces a mottled and sometimes, close to iridescent effect.

As for what are Michael Wiswell's paintings about: click.