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These Painters Abandoned Brushes for Sledgehammers, Chainsaws, and Blowtorches
Artists aren’t fans of rules. After studying art history and theory for years, many creative practitioners subvert all they’ve learned in order to make something that feels fresh and new. Painters, in particular, wrestle with age-old ideas about their craft—which can be traced all the way back to when the Neanderthals brushed pigment on cave walls. Naysayers have been purporting that “painting is dead” since photography gave society a new way to freeze momentary images into everlasting art. How, then, to keep it exciting?
One way that artists address this quandary is through innovative materials and processes. Abandoning that most traditional painting tool—the brush—allows for greater experimentation and radical new gestures (though it can often run the risk of seeming gimmicky). Many of the following artists transform the physical act of painting into a violent act, often literally destroying to create.
Niki de Saint Phalle
Niki de Saint Phalle is probably best known for her “Nanas”—totemic, colorfully patterned sculptures of female forms. While these are giant celebrations of women, de Saint Phalle also defied 1960s conventions of femininity as she decided to use a most unusual device to make paintings: a gun. Early in the decade, she began a series of “Tirs,” or “Shooting Pictures.” To make these, she affixed paint-filled plastic bags to canvases, then shot them so they’d explode and drip pigment down the linen. Bullet holes remained, lending a rough violence—and a sense of randomness and chance—to the surface. De Saint Phalle left the plastic bags on the surface and often incorporated other elements (mesh, a metal seat, leaves) into her strange assemblages. The artist began wearing a white suit during her shootings and inviting other prominent artists, such as Robert Rauschenberg, to wield the gun themselves; her artmaking became a communal event.
Lucien Smith
A Simple Twist of Fate 1, 2012
Phillips
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Lucien Smith
Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered 3, 2012
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After Lucien Smith graduated from the Cooper Union in 2011, he began using a fire extinguisher to apply paint to canvas. The results, his “Rain Paintings,” are lightly speckled with blue, black, yellow, and red drops. Collectors immediately caught on, and by 2014, a single work could achieve six figures at auction. Critics were not so keen: In a now-iconic 2014 article for Artspace, Walter Robinson coined the term “Zombie Formalism” to describe an emerging style of painting in which artists use “a straightforward, reductive, essentialist method” that “brings back to life the discarded aesthetics of Clement Greenberg, the man who championed Jackson Pollock, Morris Louis, and Frank Stella’s ‘black paintings,’ among other things.” These artworks, Robinson claimed, sell well, but are ultimately vacuous. Smith, he alleged, was one of the main offenders—just because he was the first artist to use a fire extinguisher doesn’t make his work any good.
Abby Leigh
Abby Leigh
Competitive Skies 1, 2018
Johannes Vogt Gallery
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At first glance, Abby Leigh’s paintings look like lovely constellations of flowing lines and circles. Step closer, and the surfaces appear severely distressed—Leigh smashed them with a sledgehammer. The artist likens each mark to a scar, and the painting’s surface to a skin. To make the works, she layers wax, oil, pigment, and paint atop dibond, then pierces, sands, and otherwise assaults the material. Competitive Skies 2 (2018), for example, features intimate curlicue scribbles and stick figures alongside craters where the silver dibond peeps through—evidence of trauma, with displaced paint gathering around the edges. In Sand (2018), Leigh makes red marks against a light yellow background. Tracks and arrows suggest some kind of map, likening painting to cartography and placemaking. “Sledgehammering is an infliction of pain,” Leigh told Artsy. “But when I’m finished with the work, the end result can be much more delicate.”
What Sets a Wood Print Apart?
When you put your photo on a wood print, you’re printing on a piece of nature. It’s something that will catch your viewers’ eyes and make them look twice. They might be drawn in by the swirls of the grain or the warm hue of the wood itself. It accentuates specific details of your photo and takes it to another level, with an earthy, rustic feel. Pair the print with the right picture, and you’ve got a stunning piece of décor on your hands.
There are many distinguishing features of wood prints, but many choose to utilize them because they are:
– Unique: One of the first things your guests will notice about a wood photo display is the grain. When you print on natural materials, you can see the organic swirls within each block of wood. Of course, that means each one is different. No two prints — even of the exact same photo — will be the same. This aspect makes it a great choice for gifts when you want to show off the one-of-a-kind nature of your relationship with someone. It’s also excellent for collages and wall displays, so you can differentiate the display type from other photos while maintaining a connecting thread. The grain is one of the most noticeable and beloved aspects of a wood photo print.
– Warm: Another critical component of wood prints is the hue. Pictures printed on wood planks tend to take on a somewhat yellowish tint. It isn’t overly present to the point where it is unappealing, but it does slightly affect the color of your print. Don’t worry, though — this is part of the charm. For the most part, this color difference behaves like a sepia tone. It makes your image feel like part of the wood and adds a warm tinge. Color variations in the wood also add some uniqueness to your print. Each piece of wood can have a subtly different color due to differences in trees, making your work more original. For the most part, the wood at Printique is very light-colored — we use a pale birch for these prints.
– Easy to work with: People also like to have pictures printed on wooden blocks because they are easy to work with. They are water and heat-resistant, so your print can stand up to the elements, even in a home with kids or pets. They can be placed outside, in a hot garage or indoors like any other photo.
– Easy to clean: Wood photo displays are also easy to clean with a sponge and soapy water — you can remove any smudges and fingerprints easily and wipe off any spills.
– Versatile: Wood prints also offer an array of display options — you can hang them on a wall, place them in a frame or prop them up on a stand.
– Durable: Wood prints are also incredibly durable and resilient — you won’t have to worry about a fragile glass frame or avoid putting up pictures in the kids’ playroom. This décor is robust.
How Is a Wood Print Made?
Creating wood prints requires a printing method called dye sublimation — it uses chemical processes to infuse the dyes directly into the surface. That’s what “sublimation” refers to — the chemical process that occurs when a substance skips the liquid phase and goes straight from a solid to a gas. That state change occurs to the specialized ink and helps it infuse with the wood.
With dye sublimation, the printer turns the liquid ink into a gas, pushes it into the surface — in this case, wood — and then turns the ink back into a solid. When the ink particles turn back into a solid, they are stuck within the surface. The color is now permanently infused with the wood.
To make our wood prints at Printique, we follow a straightforward process:
1. We print your image in its reverse onto transfer paper using sublimation dyes. Our trained technicians pay special attention to the color profile of your image, so everything stays true. Without this manual review step, sublimation dyes can be inaccurate. They are a bit harder to match than regular dyes, so you always want to work with a printing company that manually reviews your photos.
2. Next, we line up the transfer paper on top of the plank of wood and send it through a heat press. In the heat press, the dyes sublimate to their gas state.
3. The press then pushes these gaseous dye particles into the wood before they can become solid. This movement ensures that the solidification process occurs within the wood’s surface, making them a permanent part of the material. These colors are now part of the wood.
Dye sublimation is an excellent technique that offers crisp colors, permanently infused with the surface. You can use it on a wide variety of surfaces, too, like metal, glass and acrylic.
Wood Print Options
Every custom print from Printique has a variety of options, including the size and mounting method of your photo. Due to the nature of the material, wood prints all receive a beautiful matte finish, which will make it easy for your print to resist glare. You can place it anywhere in your room, and it won’t be too difficult to see on a sunny day. It does, however, mean you can’t have a high-gloss or satin finish.
We offer wood prints in sizes from four by six inches to 20 by 20 inches. Whether you want a large display to be the focal point of a wall or a small accent for your desk, these options open up a variety of applications. Plus, you can use square or rectangular prints to make use of the best crop for your image.
To accommodate that variety, we have several mounting options, including:
– Stand: For the smaller wood prints, you can order a display stand. It is made of the same high-quality wood as your photo print and cradles it from the bottom. Putting your photo in the stand allows you to prop it up on a flat surface like a table or desk. These rustic displays are excellent additions to a nightstand or a kitchen counter. They can also be helpful at art shows, so you can set them up on a booth to attract buyers and maximize your tabletop space.
– Keyhole cutouts: All wood prints come with keyhole cutouts in the back. With these keyholes, you can hang them easily on your walls. Create a collage display or hang one as a statement piece. You’ll find the cutouts on both the vertical and horizontal edges of the print, so you can orient it appropriately. However you want to hang it, the keyhole cutouts make it easy.
– Frames: All of our wood prints are three-quarters of an inch thick with sanded edges, so you can frame them for easy display. Whether you want to pair it with a sleek, modern frame or something more earthy and rustic to go with the wood grain, a wooden photo print works well with frames as well as on their own.
When you’re ready to display your custom wood print, Printique makes it easy. The stand and cutouts are included with your print. If you change your mind after propping it up on your end table for a year, you can easily hang the photo on the wall, since the cutouts are built-in. Versatility is one of our specialties.
