Jim Giddings

I painted watercolor for 15 years before switching to media which enable layering, texturing, scumbling, covering and reworking. In my heart, however, I adore watercolor for its inherent transparency and immediacy, and I’m not attracted to heavy brushstrokes or thick slabs of paint. So, after I brush paint directly from oil paintsticks onto white, clay-coated paper, I begin to slowly take off some of the paint, often removing almost as much as I put on. By selectively leaving some paint and scraping or rubbing away other areas, I can retrieve the white paper surface and a lightness of feeling not unlike a successful watercolor. Then I add more paint, then remove, then add…. I’m trying to have it both ways: depth and richness of oil paint and watercolor-like delicacy.

Something else is happening. I’m not building or constructing an image as much as I am uncovering one, slowly shaping the image as I add and subtract. My marks and the echoes of previous lines and strokes begin to take on more importance and, combined, just may become the subject.

~Jim Giddings