And then, one day, I came to pulp painting; immediately, I felt at ease. Working with beaten, papermaking fibers—hand pigmented, stirred, and filled in plastic cups, like festive pots of thinned- out mayonnaise—required some adjustment. But once I relaxed into the media, it seemed to begin to obey my hand; it also, powerfully, felt like an extension of my mind. I could envision something and there was no delay, the image-making was im-mediate. It may sound odd to talk about adrenaline and pots of paper pulp, but this is what it was. Working with paper pulp felt like riding a galloping and obstinate horse straight down a rocky bluff. It stupefied me that this was not paint, but little bits of pulp, suspended in water; it did not mix like paint, as the pigments swirled before they coalesced, and never quite absorbed; and colors acted differently. The pigments that I was used to knowing as transparent in oil paint shared none of the same properties when used in paper pulps, some of which were grainier and thinner, some of whose color was weaker, and others almost hallucinatory. Painting involved pouring from spoons, cups, dribbling from a brush, and using brushes, both tiny and fist-size, as gentle depositors of the pulp, so tenderly that the surface would not be disturbed by the caress of brush and hand. I worked on drab, thick blankets on wooden rolling carts; the floor had drains. Water gushed everywhere, and everything was wet, for hours on end. I found that I could work quickly, laying in color over color, not worrying about the muddiness that threatens oil painting, my hand becoming an extension of my imagination. This delighted me. For over ten years I had worked in oil paint, compiling narratives sur-rounding women and their bodies, stories tinged with sexuality and violence. Sometimes these were portraits, at times there were multiple figures engaging in abstracted and charged interactions. Painting was an anxious process of accumulating images—fighting signifiers of virtuosity and a desire to render in the same way, all over the picture. I felt pleasure moving the paint around but there wasn't quite enough pleasure there. A year or two before I began to make pulp paintings, I also be-gan my first body of drawings, in gouache and chalk pastel. I had never thought enough of my abilities as a drawer or my imagination to think I could really draw. I assumed my strengths were as a paint-er. I never cared much for drawing that felt too representational; I wanted to explore the areas of transformation possible in drawing—the ways in which gouache and chalk pastel can vibrate and trick the eye into believing that the picture is moving. Color and form here could easily go in and out of human and animal, material and illusion. There was something easy and free and also directly from the imagination that felt a part of the image. I began drawing un-sanitized fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, then on to a few more bodies of work looking at fairy tales, and one erotic novel. Draw-ing took me into an imaginary world, one that correlated with the centuries-old magical stories, and to Story of O, a physically charged twentieth-century novel that I looked at. Pulp painting took off where drawing ended. It feels even more free, more directly related to my imagination, harder to control, and at times, even more rewarding. I can stalk the same subject matter, magical transformations, women dressed up and down in private and performative moments. But I have found these images, which are just beginning to come out in this media, talk back; they seem to come forward. The assault of the color which in painting would feel kitschy or gaudy; the sheer confusion that paper can also exist as paint, and what was once all wet is now dry; the organic chaos of the pulp and its flow, counterbalanced by the shadow presence of the hand that shaped it, dazzle me. I have looked to pulp paintings as a guide to my drawings and paintings, a meeting place some-where in the middle of a dark wood. As I continue to make bodies of drawings based on literature, I anticipate that the zippy forms of pulp will inspire my drawings to elbow out of their edges and flirt with their environment and the viewer. Papermaking has taken me somewhere wholly new and unexpected, bringing both me and my studio work along for a tremendous ride.
