Why Rabbit Skin and Gesso?

Painting in practice places the practitioner, viscerally and intellectually  in the past and in the present - a dichotomy I hear you say. Yes paintings past is paintings present and its future and its what you receive when you engage with the past, a body full of history - ritual - tradition, all of which can transmute and expand a contemporary approach to painting and drawing practice. 

The tools of the trade, techniques and material methodologies of the Old Master Painters are a contemporary painters best friend. They will keep you healthy and your studio toxic free, which is what we all aspire to??? Anyway as a mature painter my health and well being are of great importance, but apart from that there is a rich history and experience of making that will expand your perspective and experience of painting but it will also expand the field of contemporary painting when we really reconsider paintings material history

I personally blend traditional material methodologies with contemporary factory produced products as this is where my interest lies, I enjoy bringing the past into the present in practice but also in the conceptual development  of my work.

So really there was no other name other than Rabbit Skin and Gesso for this blog - its the way in which all of my painting begin: Ritual and Tradition keeps you grounded in the cannon of  Western painting and asks of you to participate in something bigger than yourself. It also requires you to cook - to set up a kitchen - because you have to Make your Rabbit Skin Glue and if your are really keen, which you all are, you will also make your own Gesso. [Recipes to follow]

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