Elaine d'Esterre

Feminist Visual Artist – Paintings, Mixed Media and Etchings

Monthly Archives: March 2015


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Etching and silver leaf continued

First Stages 

In these small contemporary landscapes based on Lake Mungo I am still experimenting with silver leaf and chine colle layering.

B. Chine colle and silver leaf over B. etching layer
C. First layer
A. Chine colle and silverleaf over A.
B. First layer
A. First Layer

Second Stage

Gold leaf in the first image required toning down with layer of semi transparent white. Silver leaf in the other two almost invisible.

In the second version of the second image I wet the chine colle and scrunched it into a folded shape reminiscent of folds in the landscape. The second version of the third image looked better in vertical format also with changed chine colle.

Untitled at Lake Mungo
Untitled Lake Mungo
Untitled lake Mungo

I aimed to capture particular elements of this eroded and parched long lunette shaped dune weathered by rain and wind then shaped into small pyramid shaped hills.


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Silver Leaf and Intaglio Experiment

Background

The etchings in the slide show are earlier experimental versions using metal leaf with black etching ink with varying degrees of success.

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In my most recent attempts, this time with silver leaf I also added a red ground because I felt that the silver may be too cool.

Terrestrial Mind 1, 2015, intaglio and silver leaf on BFK Rives 13×26 cm
Detail
Terrestrial Mind 2, 2015
Detail 1
Detail 2


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Mungo Hairdo

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This painting began as a depiction of a wind swept poet with letters and words transported in the wind and then onto her forehead. It didn’t work, cast aside and changed the idea to inspiration by starlight which also didn’t work and looked a bit stilted. Weeks passed. In frustration I poured 2 paint layer together and left them in the sun to dry and forgot about for the rest of the day. One greyish layer thinned with turps and a little oil flowed on top of an opaque creamy oilier layer.  Instead of the whole surface being totally changed the paint had ideas of its own.

The poet with the Afro hairstyle morphed into poet with Mungo hairstyle, incorporated into a windswept tree shape that seemed appropriate after the battering we received in a sandstorm.

I like the rawness and immediacy of the paint strokes in the earlier versions and feel that at this stage I may have fiddled too much even though I liked the unexpected imagery caused by paint tensions.