Barbara Matowski

“Each day I cannot wait to get into my studio to start putting paint on a surface, building up, sanding down, layering, revealing, covering over.  Throughout this push-pull of adding and subtracting, I’m constantly unsatisfied with a piece, covering up areas I don’t like, windowing out areas I do, layering, adding glazes, scribbling with a pencil or oil stick, often not knowing what I’m doing or wanting.

I just keep affecting the surface each day, and then something always begins to work and it starts to be fun.  Shadows or textures of earlier marks show through, or a glaze over scratches is interesting, and I’m suddenly happy.  As always, it’s the unsatisfied covering up, layering and random ’fixing’ that ends up to be the very aspect that makes me most happy with a piece.”