SOMETIMES ART JUST HAPPENS

mixed media diptych...8x10 each

For the past several months I’ve been making a lot of noise about how cramped my gallery and studio have become, with paintings, prints, and drawings piled and stacked all over the place. I have even made half-assed attempts at a “clearance sale” with modest success. I’m sure those of you who know me well have simply passed this all off as Renzulli being himself, always finding something to make noise about. But I gotta tell you…this is different…this is serious! How serious? Since the beginning of the year I have not done any significant painting because of my reluctance to add to an already overflowing inventory. Now what kind of attitude is that for an artist…I can’t paint because I have too many paintings?

And it is not just the larger canvases. I get frustrated tripping over all the smaller stuff, framed and unframed, lying around and always in the way. I certainly don’t want to add to that. So it is understandable that the muses have taken their leave of me and I’ve been flopping about the studio, reading, napping, finding busy work, or daydreaming….I do a lot of that. Last month a visiting artist showed me how she finished her watercolors with a coat of wax medium so they did not have to be framed under glass. I got back to the studio and tried it out on one of my small watercolors, was quite pleased with the result, and the next thought was to see how it worked with the clay mono types and drawings. It worked quite well and opened the door to a number of new ideas and options; one of them being the creation of small abstract clay landscapes. If you have seen me demonstrate the process you know that you never do just one print, but in fact pull 3 or 4, or more in order to get the interesting texture and colors the process provide.

At this point I have about 6 prints, all on the small side, to which I’ve applied the wax finish, and I’m faced with the question…what do I do with them. I have no interest in matting and/or framing them, so I decide to mount them on cradled hardboard panels and to my great dismay I was very pleased with the results; so pleased that before I knew I had created 21 of these waxed, mounted, clay landscapes. So much for not bringing any new work into the studio.


clay mono type triptych...each 8x8

The muses, in all of their sneakiness, crept back into the studio, and sometimes, despite our inclinations, art just happens.

On a darker note: