Calamine

Mixed media on canvas 48”x 56”, 2014. This painting is on a stretched canvas and ready to be hung.

A friend gave me all these sample cans of paint after she got finished painting one of the rooms in her house.  There was this one tiny can and the label said the color was ‘Calamine’.  When I opened it, the shade I saw immediately took me back to being a kid in the summer with tons of mosquito bites. It also reminded me of when my sisters, my brother and I all had chicken pox. Calamine lotion was what our mom always used on us and this paint hue was the EXACT color of actual calamine lotion (at least from my memory).  I love that a specific color can spark a chain of memories and take you back to a place and time so precisely.  The shapes found in this painting are playful and illustrative variations of the “hair-dos” I’ve been painting for awhile.  I love that the many suggested “things” in this piece, aren’t straightforward. They remain a mystery. “Calamine” is also about playing with all this white, layered space- how much, and how far, you can reach back into it.