Winter Mountains

So when I started this piece we were still very much in the grip of winter- what a difference a few weeks makes. By the time I was finally finished with this incredibly time consuming sculpture spring had sprung and I’m just now getting this posted as I haven’t the time for a photo shoot –

Winter Mountains”- Original sculpture by MJ Seal. Paper mache pulp, canvas and acrylic. Approximately 31″ x 35″. c. 2018To start I made some armatures with wire and made paper mache “shells” over them using strips of art supply catalogs. I mounted the shells onto a painting that was going nowhere and had been sitting around half finished for months. I then covered everything in a paste made up of art supply catalogs and old paintings on paper that I decided I hated. The final result is this mass of soft, matte gray that kind of glides over the wall. It looks like a cross between a 3-d topographical map of the local mountain ridges and a cluster of primitive sea creatures. I love all the texture and movement created by the tediously sculpted valleys- from close up some sections look almost real. Also l didn’t coat this piece in any varnish or other topcoat as I really like the soft bumpy texture of the paper mache which from a distance looks similar to the canopy of a winter forest.I specifically chose art supply catalogs and ground up old paintings as a sculpting medium for this project as I associate them with potential and renewal -the same feelings I associate with a dormant winter landscape. I also like that everything was pasted over a painting that was already half painted over a going nowhere- it found a very new incarnation.