"Sunflower Nymph"
(oil painting on canvas, 18X22, 2006)
"Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing."
Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Every friend is to the other a sun, and a sunflower also. He attracts and follows."
Jean Paul Richter
Just like many other artists before me on occasion I reuse my canvases. I started this practice back in college. My finances at the time were in a pretty poor condition and my art expenses were trying to finish them off. I found a solution to my financial difficulties when I discovered that one could buy an old (and quite ugly in most cases) painting for almost nothing at a thrift store. The right way to go about reusing the paintings I bought would’ve been to prime their surfaces with gesso, but I figured that I could get away with painting directly on top of the images. My art professors seem to like the idea and I liked the weird paintings that resulted from my ‘layering technique’. I later began to ‘vandalize’ my own old artwork. The sunflower nymph is one of those paintings and a huge improvement from the original painting of sunflowers I did during a period in my life when for God knows which reason I decided to try painting flowers.
