the paint peel backstory
The paint peels. What are they and how did they come about? Today’s blog post will break down the paint peel origin story. When I first transitioned to using a glass painting pallet (I just use old frames from the thrift store), was when I discovered ‘paint peels’.
I always felt that these paint peels were still so visually appealing, so naturally I kept them. Fall of 2021 is when I was working on my solo exhibition and finally it connected for me to repurpose the paint peels BACK onto some of my paintings. I would adhere large layers of this plastic-y, colorful, and texturized paint onto my paintings with matte medium. It felt natural and made so much sense because in the past, I’ve mixed acrylic paint with impasto mediums to create texture similar to the paint peel. In spring of 2022 is when I dove into my interest in resin. I’ve seen other people put lots of items in resin as a preservation method, and this aligned so much with what I was already doing (saving these paint discards). Josie Lewis art is the first artist I ever saw that put paint in resin (I do not claim to be the first to do it!).
This fired something off in my brain about being able to preserve discarded paint by giving it a new life in wearable and functional products. It grew from there to include other artists’ discarded art supplies and now has become a more sustainable route for art material disposal. It’s not the perfect disposal route by any means, but it’s on the way to something really good. I now even save the pieces of resin from an over-pour or the little droplets that spill and cure outside of the mold to repurpose back into my products. I’ll paint these dried pieces of resin to give them a new life, too. It’s all a big circle of reusing art supplies to make art. I’ve preserved everything from paint tubes, caps, dried paint, sculpture material discards, sketchbook paper, etc,.
PAINT PEEL (NOUN)
“The dried paint discards that are scraped off of glass pallets after use. Paint at this phase can’t be utilized for traditional use anymore.
