Roughin it up

The clients really really like the photo of my triptych in Mary Philpott's book, Hawai'i, A Sense of Place. In particular they like the antique look of the paintings. What is hard to explain is that that look was a complete accident at the time and is very difficult to duplicate. So what I did today was take the whole canvas off the stretcher bars, soak it in a sinkful of water, crumple it up and beat it with a mallet. It still didn't get that pattern of cracks in it, but it does look a bit less shiny and new. All that soaking made it shrink a bit so now that it is restretched it has an uneven edge of canvas that I painted with the foundation terra cotta color, which I think is pretty cool....