Colleen Barry NYC Artist

Speaking Through the Ground

Added 2025-08-23 13:00:06 +0000 UTC

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about ground color—and how the ground collaborates with the layers that come after it. It’s simple in my mind: if my ground is cool, I put a warm layer on top; if my ground is warm, I go with a cooler sub-layer.

When I’m doing studies, I suggest to any painter: make oil sketches freehand. Don’t transfer a drawing for these smaller works. The paint will surprise you—you want that spontaneity and unpredictability. Let the drawing be a little naïve at that stage. Once you transfer onto a large canvas, it’s a different animal—you’re filling in the lines, fighting to recapture a spark that came naturally in the study.

In a study, the paint just behaves strangely in a good way—there are drawing errors, odd effects, and little accidents you couldn’t have planned. That’s where life happens.

Sometimes I even work back-to-front. For example, in the clouds of my Fire Pussy painting, I did the whole first pass wet-into-wet, let it dry, and then added the cat on top. You can also work with the entire background wet and drop in the first mirage or impression of your subject into that soft field. Wet-into-wet is a great way to get variety—soft edges happen automatically.