October 2004 Archives

by Sylvia Hunt, fresco artist

To the sounds of classical music, I sat down last Sunday, and I poured out my dry pigment of Verdaccio into a little pile, onto my glass top table, making sure as Wolf said, that everything was kept very clean and pure. I made a small well in the center of the pigment, and poured a small amount of distilled water into this center. There were no chemicals. Just the essence of the pure earth pigment, the water, and me. And so I began.
I started with Verdaccio, because to me, it is the 'mother' of all the paints and most importantly will be what I use for my underpainting. Verdaccio is a dark green, brown earth substance. I am mixing a limited amount of pigments for my palette; ochres, sienna, umber, red, terre verde, ultramarine, and bianco san giovani. In fresco, not many colors are needed, as the colors are kept simple, and beauty grows out of the underpainting and the different layers of paint which form depth.

by K.J. Wolf - fresco artist
Director, The Fresco School of Los Angeles (East Coast)

Once upon a time about four years ago, when the heat was stifling and I was in a small studio in Los Angeles, sifting sand to make a Fresco, I wondered what I had been dreaming about all the long years in search for just such an experience. Two chimney smoking and energetic guys, one from Russia and the other from the United Kingdom, were speaking and demonstrating at a wizard speed the deft and rich art of preparing a surface (like a skin) that would hold a glimmering and shimmering painting in lime plaster, called Fresco.

I had always wanted to paint as the masters of the Renaissance had, and here was my opportunity. I had traveled 3000 miles within the United States to find this experience, as no other was available, not even in the home of Fresco, Italy. The irony that it was, if not in my own backyard, was that it was just on the other side of the country from me.