Clay Wainscott, painting one color at a time

After studio classes at a couple of universities I decided to pursue art on my own. I went back as far as Cezanne at the beginning of the modern era and began emulating each successive style on stacks of canvas board, but when I reached a period called synthetic cubism my work began bending back toward a common sensibility. I was becoming interested in the mechanics of vision and the elements and relationships which engender recognition.

I choose common sights as scaffolding for pure painting, without narrative or metaphor, totally self-contained. I alter color relationships and reduce and compress form with the intent of producing an image more tangibly believable than photo-accuracy.

I paint with one color at a time, just the primaries, red, yellow, and blue along with white. Each pigment is reduced to transparency and applied in layers with colors mixing on the canvas back to front. There is actually very little tube paint used and finished paintings react like stained glass, pure color floating beneath a smooth waxy surface.
Clay Wainscott
Jan 21, 2015