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COAST TO COAST (p.3) |
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| yellow ochre or raw sienna, rose madder, and naphthol red. He bases all of his greens on the combination of manganese blue with various yellows, mainly cadmium yellow light. .....The artist works with paints straight from the tubes, without using a medium. He didn't need solvents either, since he cleans his brushes by wiping them with a rag, then using a cooking oil to emulsify the wet paint, followed by a washing with soap and water. Further lightening his load, Mott took only a small selection of his favorite brushes on the road. "Most of my work depends on suggestion more than careful detailing," |
he explains. "Even when working on small panels, I tend to stick with relatively large brushes. The smallest brush I use sets the scale for all the other marks I make on the board, so I try not to get too fussy." .....Mott even opted against toting an easel. Instead, he sat on stumps, the ground, and even retreated to his car to paint. Juggling a palette, brushes, a rag, and a painting took practice, so before the cross-country voyage, he took the setup on an eight-day trial run near Arles, in the South of France, and was able to paint one or two panels per day. |
His painting process starts with observation. Arriving at a new location, he generally made some paintings around the property or along a perimeter road. Some of his hosts thought where they lived looked boring, but Mott is not necessarily interested in the picturesque. He seeks something more intimate, perhaps even poetic. From the remote salt marshes of the Chesapeake to farmland in Illinois, the artist captures the ephemeral, transitional mood or atmosphere of a given place with an economy of brushwork that is dramatic in its understatement. |
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