“...a Roland Barthes-like semiotic meditation on the palette knife/Bob Ross style painting instructional video/acousmatic jam session...”

 

A student recently asked me why I am drawn to the palette knife. I had explained that the economy of mixing and applying paint with a palette knife is a major draw. I can mix and spread color across large expanses of canvas wasting nothing in the process. Paint clogs the ferrule of the brush...so much paint goes to the bottom of the turp jar...I can’t afford the wasted paint! But the sounds a palette knife makes on both palette and canvas is also mesmerizing. It got me thinking about showing a time lapse of the paint handling. Then I stuck a contact mic under the palette and captured the sounds that began this sound piece. Ruminating on the palette knife led me to today’s sound/video piece...

 

Americans’ dinner table etiquette with fork and knife (fork switching) has always seemed bizarre. Cut the meat with fork in left hand, knife in right, put knife down,swap fork to right hand, eat a bite...it’s very awkward. Europeans’ eating style with the upside down tines of the fork in left hand thing is simpler. I like mixing the paint and then getting that paint to the canvas in a fluid motion instead of dropping the palette knife and picking up a brush and so on...