Hello, friends!

After quite awhile of exploring, meditating, and meandering about with the drip, I finally came to the conclusion that either I loved it or embraced it, or I’m bullshitting myself.

Therefore, it had to be documented with some paintings that would be the beginning of a different way of working:  not exclusively, but another arrow in my quiver, so that when I came into my studio, I could use it as an aly and a partner instead of an alien and something to be overcome.

So how do I start with that?

Probably the easiest thing to do would be to put a canvas on an easel and start painting with it and let gravity take its course.  But, always trying to make it as hard as possible for myself, I thought, “That would be too damn easy.”

So...  off to Home Depot to buy tar paper:  two big rolls, which I could hardly lift.  Bring them to my studio, take everything off the four walls, staple the tar paper on the walls.

Now what?  Take 2x3-foot pieces of white paper and vertically staple all those onto the wall.  Then take 2x3-foot horizontal ones and staple that over the whole melange.  Then take 2x2-foot and, randomizing, staple that over everything else.

Take Reynolds Wrap and put that all over the walls, stapling and putting wood glue on, hoping it will seep between the papers and keep all this crazy stuff together.  Then, after that all dries, go into my stock of Windsor Newton tubes and, like a madman, squeeze all the paint haphazardly all over the paper.  Some of it’s bubbling out, some of it’s curling, all kinds of things are happening.

Secretly, what I’m trying to do is create little river beds, so that when the drip comes down, it won’t follow the strict curvature of the earth.  Subconsciously I think that’s why I was doing all that...

After I did that, what next?  Mix up a melange of lindseed oil, polyurethane, and varnish, get a big roller brush, and roll the whole thing over, creating a rainbow of color, a mess, an infusion of God knows what, everything running every possible way you could think...

All right!  Now what?  Takie some heavy pieces of paper, put them on my big tables, then mix up colors of pigment—dried pigment in yellows and blues, reds and purples—and keep them in cans on the side.  Then get my special paint:  yellows and whites, etc., and open them up in an array.

Get a couple gallons of gesso and, in reality, the paper becomes the brush.  Put all that stuff on a big piece of paper, run like a madman and slap it on the water, bring it up, bring it down, sideways, ripping some of the paper, agitating it...

I had ten of them.  It was a complete hurricane of color, form, design, everything running and fighting, but everything dripping.  The drip became the actual mediator while, in my other form of art, the pooling is the mediator.  Here, everything is dictated by the downward pressure.  It runs down, catches the paper underneath, floats right over the aluminium, which will not accept anybody—just all kinds of delightful chaos to watch.  It’s probably like watching the hockey players throw their sticks at each other and beating the hell out of each other!

So then, turn on huge fans and just let it fight all night.

The next day I arrived and I looked at everything, and there were the outlines of all my friends, all made out of drip lines.

Now what?  Let’s find those big bars of beeswax impregnated with great pigment, and haphazardly make all kinds of lines on God knows what, and throw some more oil on it to agitate it more, and watch that start to drip.  Then leave it alone for two or three days and see what comes forward.

At that point, decide whether we want to make them abstract, semi-abstract, or figurative.  I was absolutely convinced that half would be abstract and half would be semi-abstract.  They all turned out to be crazy figurative.

Why?  Because on the third day I was obsessed to take the cans of color that I have made for myself, almost the consistency of Jello, put on rubber gloves, and start finger-painting through the whole thing.  The paint interrupted and worked with the drips.  Then I found an old can of paint that had been around for about 15 years, broke the layer on top, squished it around...  I was like a pig in shit, just having a ball!

The drips became friends, we all had a party together, we all cooperated over a period of weeks, then I put more stuff on it to firm it up, then the figures kept getting more and more—it was almost like looking at a Polaroid picture coming out of the mist.

It was a great learning task for me to be able to now say one of my great allies is the drip.  I didn’t use a single brush the whole time.  The paper was the brush.I have coffee a lot of Wednesdays with my artist friends, and recently I invited them all to come see this crazy melange.  They were thrilled with it, and I trust their artistic opinions.

Now I can add not only color as my friend but drips, too, as my friends.  It took me almost a 30-year voyage, but finally I came to the conclusion that for all those years, I was wrong, and the drip was right.

So the prediction came true of my spirit friends when they woke me up in the middle of the night and said, “Lamb, you are the drip!”

It’s another great road to stumble down and see where I come out.  The thing I find, the older I get, is that it’s easier to lose all identities and put on another hat, another face, another idea, and keep rowing down the stream, hoping that you’re going to get to the next waterfall...  You just want to keep breathing, keep swimming, and whatever you do, keep your mouth above the waterline!

I am thrilled and honored to be part of the world of the drips.  Gravity, watch out—here we come!

LAMB