Gallery With A Cause • Located in the New Mexico Cancer Center • Benefitting the NMCC Foundation
Please call gallery director Regina Held to arrange a private gallery tour, make a purchase, or ask any questions.
In the glorious years of the ancient Chinese Tang Dynasty (618-907AD), arts, invention, commerce, growth, and dynamic leadership held sway. Monasteries throughout the country took in children and trained them in everything from creating fine porcelain to martial arts. Once a young boy, helping clean up a painting studio after his master had finished for the day, accidentally spilled black ink on the beautiful painting that was drying. He tried to clean it up and couldn’t, so he hid. The next day the master came and was horrified – at first. Then he saw the creative movements the spilled ink had brought to his painting and called out to the apprentice. They began again, and splash, first and today also traditionally in black and white, had begun.
When I first took Ming Franz’s painting class, I planned it as a new way to paint watercolor washes. Then she taught the black ink splash. Then we added color, and suddenly the liquid brilliantly colored acrylics were moving on paper, canvas, and boards. It was an exciting, fun revelation for all of us. In the years since, my arthritis and carpel tunnel have made it so I can no longer hold a brush. Now my tools of choice are splash, a palette knife and spoons. The spoons are my creative substitute for a brush and open a new direction.
Splash painting with acrylic on canvas is my choice of art. I can choose colors but must be very open as to what happens with that color when I move it on the canvas. In fact, if one plans too much the painting will take over and make something new, and often more exciting. That’s ok. I’m doing something by accident that has been a surprise addition to my life as a painter.
