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This morning I did a sketch, because I intended to do Magnolia Mound.
This is a photograph of the building out here. I did a little pencil sketch
here, which is the angle I want to do it from. So I will attempt to do
this without boring you too much. The colors, the absence of blue is pretty
obvious in my paintings. I have no usable blue clay or dirt that translates
to blue. When I put it on paper it turns gray. The coolest color I've
got is this green, which you saw in that little bucket, the little pot
that I passed around. This comes from north of Shreveport, near Arkansas.
Its the coolest color I have. The other unusual color is the pink, the
mauvy pink that I showed you earlier, and this is some of it here. So,
I'll attempt to start this. I'll answer any questions, except the ones
that pertain to I.R.S.
(Do you mix your clays?)
Ironically, mixing them, they become muddy.
(What made you think of mud?)
I'm so glad you asked that. As a child,
and having a very naughty mind, I thought about a lot of things. I'm really
fulfilling a childhood dream: to paint dirty pictures.
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The real reason
is that I... in 1988, eight years ago, the Department of Agriculture asked
me, my wife and several other local artists to participate in a show that
was promoting Louisiana products. I wanted to do something cutesy, and
something agriculture[related]. At that time I had four different colors
of clay and I decided I would try to make it into a medium that would
a... a paintable medium. I experimented with different mediums as I did
this and ended up with egg yolk. For two reasons: it works great, it's
very transparent and has no color. Its very permanent, and its considered
a natural product. Oil mediums and acrylic mediums work equally as well,
or better sometimes, but I really wanted this to be an "all natural" Louisiana
product. After painting over three thousand, probably close to four thousand,
they've been kind of a stroke of luck. Those of you who are painters know
that a lot of our success depends on luck.
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