DARK, FOREBODING, AND GRIMY,

so is there any wonder why these paintings aren't flying of the walls of the gallery? For some reason I am attracted to the idea of these imaginative "industrial skylines", aka, industrial art.

It started in Mitch Lyon's (the artist who developed the process of clay printing) kitchen one afternoon in the late 90's. I was in a bit of a burn-out with my watercolors and staring at me from a wall was a thin, horizontal, abstract clay print of Mitch's. I don't know what it was about, but all I could see was some distant factories and smokestacks in the distance, and I knew immediately what I wanted to do. Shortly after that I set up my own clay slab and began exploring the world of clay printing.

This is the very first industrial skyline, and an early clay mono type.

Of course I had to do more, and I did, and actually sold several of them. I quickly discovered that I could not control the medium like I could with watercolor, and that eventually led me to begin enhancing the clay prints with pastel. One thing led to another, and it wasn't long before I was working with pastels as the primary medium, but that is for another post. Today we are still on the industrial skylines.



Next up...industrial pastels..