Project #35 Bram Bogart, Texture and Color

Bram Bogart, was a Belgian expressionist painter.  He experimented for many years to create a mixture of oil, mortar, siccative, powdered chalk, varnish, and raw pigment, applied to large, heavy wooden backing structures.  

He used this mixture to create his impasto paintings. His artworks are studies in color, texture, surface quality and form.  

Detail of a painting.

To mimick the look and feel of Bogart's materials, we added acrylic paint to spackling (you can also used joint compound or wet plaster to create the surfaces).  The mixture can be extruded and spread onto a surface.  We used wood panels and canvasboard.  Heavy paper, metal, sealed cardboard and possibly plastic surfaces would work as well.  

In some of Bogart's artworks, it looks like extra pigment was added.  You can add crumbs of ground up crayon or sidewalk chalk to your wet mixture.  The basic supplies were easy: joint compound, acrylic paint, substrate, plastic spatulas, disposable icing bag with large tips or sandwich bags. 

We found that a mixture of  1:4 up to 1:2 parts paint to spackling worked very well. If the thickness is about 1/2" thick, it takes hours or overnight to dry.  

Spackle and joint compound tend to crack while drying but that can add to the surface. Plaster compounds take longer to dry but have not cracked in our experiments. 

This is a great project for artists of all ages.  

Below is a student example on a 5 x 5" gesso board. After the mixture dried, we sealed it which made the color more saturated and gave it a sheen. You can use clear acrylic medium or white glue with a little water mixed in, about half and half.