Tag: acrylic

Big Water

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized
Big Water

For a long while I have been meaning to paint some much larger works. I finally finished one of these paintings. It is 3 feet by 4 feet (not huge but for me very large). It is tricky to work on a surface this big as you not only use a lot more paint it also feels like it is drying faster than normal. The painting also got heavy and difficult to move around without bumping the ceiling or walls in my work space. I tend to move paintings around and look at them from various distances and angles, tricky with this one.

This painting morphed and just about fell apart but then I switched to a small squeegee I occasionally use and suddenly it really started to work. Most of the mark making is done with a squeegee tool that is maybe 1.25″ in width… it leaves very decisive and clear marks. Once I found the rhythm it painted itself.

All the difficulties aside it is exciting to see something that feels like it has some legitimate scale. I am really hoping to do a couple more paintings of this size in the coming weeks… we shall see!

It is also a bit challenging to take photos of a painting this large! It doesn’t fit in my photo cube and it is difficult to get even lighting on the surface. I have attached a detail of some of the brush work so that you can get a little better sense of the surface. Still these photos don’t quite do it justice.

 

Three Paintings

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

IMG_9090

I finished these there paintings this week. I still need to sign them and mount hangers on the back but the art is done. They are all 18″ x 18″ acrylic paintings. I’m getting down to the wire for my solo show (it is the end of the month). I have a handful of additional paintings I am currently working on which may or may not make the cut… plus there are three paintings I’m really hoping to do before the show.

Which of these three paintings do you like the best?

 

 

Across the sky

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

 

image
18″ x 18″ acrylic painting

I’m continuing to flesh out the cloud series I recently began.  This is an in studio iPhone photograph of the most recent piece. Once I finish the painting I’ll take a proper photograph!

I will paint a couple more of these… Easy to get lost in this stuff.

Heard of the dead?

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

IMG_8950Here is the complete collection of bison skull paintings I have been busily working on in recent weeks. It is nice to see them all together, feels like a small accomplishment! These will be part of my “Shadows of the West” solo show that is taking place in late March. I still have so much more I want to do…

All of the paintings are acrylic paint on acrylic plexiglass. They are 18″x18″ and 20″x20″ in size.

Do you have a favorite in the group? Thanks for taking the time to check them out!

Final Word

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized
Western Shadows #2

This is the completed version of “Western Shadows (bison skull) II”. It is, for some reason,  particularly difficult to capture this painting digitally, it just doesn’t seem to represent the final piece properly. I am including some detailed photographs that display some of the intriguing textural elements that make the physical painting so much more compelling (at least to me).

This is an acrylic painting that is 20″ x 20″

 

 

Western Shadow (bison skull)

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

IMG_8644This is the newest acrylic painting I have completed. I am putting more pieces together for the “Shadows of the West” show. My goal here is to create what amounts to a really atmospheric still life painting. I want it to have a very ghostly ethereal quality, not entirely there. I found a bit of success with this particular painting. I am currently working on a couple other paintings with a similar approach, hopefully I will be able to post another one next week!

 

 

Look Ahead (candy)

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized
Look Ahead (Candy)

This is an 18″ x 18″ acrylic painting that I recently finished.

Before I took the final photograph I took a snapshot with my iPhone in the studio. My subjects have been bouncing around from minimal landscapes to portraits of cows (cowscapes)? I thought it was interesting seeing the latest cow portrait next to “Cloud & Sea” on my easel. Wondering how these paintings will relate to one another in the context of a gallery show. Each painting was done by the same hand, same mediums and the same general approach. They are different paintings but they both are sort of a simplistic study of isolation/solitude. These two in particular had a nice relationship and set my mind at ease to some degree.

Building a collection of paintings for a show is both exciting and a bit daunting. I am always wondering if I shouldn’t narrow my scope and make a really tight collection of paintings with a very specific subject holding them together. The problem is when I’m working I always get excited about “the next painting”. Often this leads to something seemingly unrelated to the previous piece. Tangents and random explorations are part of the creative process and lead to new ideas and often new approaches. In a perfect world I would love to have a massive space where I could hang paintings to really get the overall feel. Then I would replace paintings that were not bolstering the show. Remove paintings that felt redundant or didn’t enrich the overall feeling. Create new paintings that would fill out the collection in just the right way. Of course this is not a perfect world and that is just a daydream. So ultimately I will follow my gut when choosing pieces and have a little faith…