Jay Long

I create mixed-media paintings with color and line quality reminiscent of painterly etchings. This impression is achieved through the addition and removal of multiple layers of oil paint over acrylics on a heavily gessoed (primed ) wooden panel. My shadow box paintings resemble found object art. The appearance of an old box is achieved by gluing various papers and fabrics inside hand-made wood boxes that have been painted and distressed. The papers and fabrics are then aged with dry pigment, varnish, and shellac. The paintings are executed on birch panel that has been cut and broken to fit the box. The panel is gessoed, some-times collaged, and then finished with acrylic and oil paints. My creative process begins with a sketch of an idea. Ideas are sometimes inspired by literature, music , or theatre as a way of personally interpreting historic and contemporary culture. Other sketches are created automatically, without premeditation, in order to discover the features of a character or a scene more as a participant in the emerging idea than as its creator.