Sometimes, I just want to create art that's beautiful and elegant without any layering of ideas or meaning. Bamboo is a beautiful plant and is a traditional image used as a decorative element across cultures, especially Japanese and Chinese. I also love gilding – the art of applying metal leaf to a decorative object. All of these elements came together five years ago in the original "Bamboozled."
Fast forward to today. I have a few more pieces in this series, and the newest piece is a second take, “Bamboozled II.”
I kept the elements that I love – the metallic plaster background and the gilding – but I employed new high relief.
I used a gypsum plaster to create the basic shape of the leaves and stem. This plaster is much easier to build higher so the bamboo literally and visually pops off the canvas.
After the plaster dried, I carved the detail, which is difficult on canvas; I ended up placing the canvas flat on my work table with books underneath for support as I pressed down with my carving tools.
I gilded the leaves with composite gold leaf and glazed them to highlight the crevices and antique the look.
Bas relief translates beautifully into prints. The raised plaster creates shadows that accentuate the dimensionality. The shadows captured in a fine-art print fool the eye into perceiving more depth than is actually there.