Revisiting Decalcomania - digging into the Decalcomania Swamp

Inspirational quotes from one of the artists I admired - and Decalcomania was one of the things I tried to emulate from his work:

“Art has nothing to do with taste. Art is not there to be tasted”
“Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities
and draw a spark from their juxtaposition.”
― Max Ernst
^{DECALCOMANIA SWAMP - n.d. - scanned 2014 - acrylic on paper}The above is one of my 'lost' pieces, created with a nod to Max Ernst. As part of a literary piece, I published it (among other illustrations for the writing) 4 years ago: GARDEN OF FERNAL DELIGHTS - Otto’s Dream - the writing was supposed to be a chapter of a fantasy book, which is still on the backburner. Will I ever finish it?

Please Note: whatever I link to from before the Hive Hard Fork, I try to save as Hive/PeakD, so I also edit the trailing notes to reflect my current status.

^{DECALCOMANIA TEXTURE - 2007}I created numerous images like this, the above I used several ways on my old (now defunct) website, and mirrored as a banner background:

A important aspect of my painting techniques, developed since about the mid-seventies, is Decalcomania. I come back to it time and time again. I have raw files of experimental images I never used; while some were developed further for merchandise designs. In paintings, I worked directly on canvas, but also created these images on Mylar or plastic sheets. I work with acrylics, so the images created on plastic or Mylar can be transferred onto any other support (including canvas). That process is to stick the design face down onto the support, coated with acrylic medium. Once completely dry, the plastic can be carefully removed using water to loosen it from the paint film. Particularly if the design was created on plastic and folded like a Rohrschach, then transferred, it makes people wonder how on earth the mirror effect was accomplished. Sometimes I used just a small image within a otherwise 'normal' painting.
Some of the decalcomania pieces were mirrored multiple times in Photoshop, which I then used for wallpaper designs and various merchandise applications. Just such a wallpaper I used on my Gravatar Page:

^{DECALCOMANIA WALLPAPER}

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I posted several times about the Decalcomania technique. One of my earliest posts was 5 years ago: DECALCOMANIA and my Alter-Ego BOGOMIL
The above work used both direct manipulation on canvas, but also decalcomania images on plastic, cut out and transferred like a collage.

More recently, March 2019, I posted some stuff from my experimental files: DECALCOMANIA PLAY - A UNIQUE PAINTING EXPERIENCE
This was from a very loose detail created on Mylar and then digitally manipulated with a self portrait cloned in.

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I think I conclude for now - but searching my past before the hard fork, I also found a number of posts that are but skeletons with text, but no images. So maybe my efforts will be directed at reposting them here on Hive/PeakD with proper images and new content.

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Visit my website
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<sup>PRINTS OF MY ARTWORK AVAILABLE HERE:



just a teaser - Creatio Ex Nihilo - might become a future Alien post</sup>

If you find this useful, please repost!
MY INTRODUCTION - ABOUT MY WORK

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should you not be on the blockchain, or have no upvote power, or this post is already older than 7 days, you can always just buy me a coffee.