Twenty-three years into my art career I decided to break from pyrography and try pure paint.  Once a purist in pyrography, it took 10 years (and a dare) to add color to my work.  After experimenting in the subtlest, most minimal way with various wet media (including coffee, inks and watercolor), I finally settled on acrylics to enhance my monochromatic, sepia-toned burns.  Over time, I turned to a more confident palette and style and was more excited to add color to enhance my sepia subjects.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the look, feel - and aroma - of burning images onto paper and wood –and will continue making pyrography my core medium for the foreseeable future.  But, like my art, I am a work in progress, and always will be.

 

 

Pyrography is such a tight medium; one uses tiny metal tools that heat up and then strokes the surface to create highly detailed sepia-toned marks that finally make up an image.  It is time consuming to create one work, which is fine, and I love teaching it, but I felt a creative urge to put my marks down in a much quicker, looser, expressive manner, and experiment with what would happen.  This task has been at the top of my mind for years, so putting away my burner and breaking out the paints became an uncomfortable and necessary part of my growth.

 

 

I never had the intention of exclusively painting a piece (I hadn’t painted a complete work since art school in college), but sometimes subjects make that decision for you, as in the case of these beautiful kestrels, which I knew I did not wish to "burn."  Now I was ready, had embellished enough of my burns to feel comfortable with acrylics, and moreover, NEEDED to stretch out of the highly detailed world of pyrography to do something loose, fresh and less highly representational.  And while the style of this “first” piece is not yet fully realized, this is a promising start - I'm happy with the results and will continue down this path with paints.  Right now, I am enjoying exploring the aesthetic of broad strokes, the abstract of realism - and not being boxed into intense detail.

 

 

I appreciate the dare charged to me those years ago, which helped me break out of my purist, highly detailed, monochromatic ways - and to grow as an artist.  I loved the loose feel of painting and achieving quicker results in a new, but familiar, way.  I think I’ll try it again.  And again.  I don’t aspire to be a painter.  I don’t even claim to be a "pyrographer."  I am an artist and will continue to explore and evolve.