playing with fire

I think of painting as an adventure, as long as you continue to learn and experiment.   I have always experimented, but lately I find myself doing destructive things to canvases and  building on top of that.   I have a new series percolating in my little brain, something along the line of "out of destruction comes beauty."

I have long been interested in organic shapes and I continue to explore the circle.   The piece above was painted and then layered with Okawara paper , a Japanese rice paper I applied with Benjamin Moore Stays Clear Polyurethane (nothing else seems to work) that creates a layered effect.  I then painted back on top of the paper, building my circles and letting the paint drip.   However, the destructive part came from running a blow torch over the canvas several times and watching the effect it had on the paint - changing the colors and bubbling up.   I never burned through the canvas.  

This has me thinking about trying different things, like working with soot, treated paper - I'm open to suggestions.   I have been reading about Yves Klein's fire paintings and would like to learn more.

This piece is multi-layered with gesso, modeling paste.   Because there are so many layers, I used the blow torch quite a bit here and liked the results.   

Tonight I again experimented burning paper with gunpowder.   I'm starting to get the hang of it!

  

This piece isn't finished, but I am having fun with it.  Again, it is layered with gesso, as well as collage.  When I used the blow torch, it burned the collage off (and didn't burn the canvas).  I have applied  paper that was burned with gunpowder as collage.   

I plan on finishing this piece this weekend, along with these other two I worked on tonight.

No telling what I'll experiment with next.  I've tried alcohol, leaving paintings outside, putting small paintings on the grill, mixing in salt, coffee and tea.  Hmmmm - where to next?