Hot Mess

One of my favorite TV shows these days is Burn Notice, and this piece is something that Gabrielle Anwar's character Fiona would just LOVE as it represents explosives and she is an expert in that arena.

It is a very large, (22x28") abstract mixed media piece made using acrylic paints, and sand and stencils, and heavy layer of gesso for added textures.

To create this piece, first I laid down the gesso, and let it drip all around and dry. Then I added paint colors, mainly yellow & red for an overall orange effect, and darker red towards the bottom and then I went over that with a glaze of dark purple/black ton the bottom o make it look burned and charred. Then I spread sand around in areas and added matt medium to it, to make it stick to the canvas and I painted over that.

Then I added stencilled words all around the canvas some in larger stencil lettering and some smaller, and some words overlap on each other for a greater feeling of depth to the piece. The stencilled words are as follows: "Flammable", "explosive", "danger", "911" and "Smoke".

Some of the gessoed areas that I let drip, and have paint over them actually make the painting look like it's almost melting in some areas which I find interesting. You can see that right underneath the word "explosive" and there are 2 small areas in the middle of the dark smoky area at the bottom that also look like they're melting.

Finally, I painted the sides of the canvas a deep purple color to add more color/contrast to the orange. I usually paint the sides of my paintings black, but I like the way the purple looks on the sides of this one.

The end result is one "Hot Mess", as the title says.

I signed it on the back.