Who is Pouring?

Acrylic pouring

Acrylic pouring swept us from our feet…by surprise.  It took one curiosity-driven pour on Dana’s deck last fall with pre-mixed ‘pouring kit’ and everything went spiraling after that.  It was two of us at first. You are inevitably surprised with unpredictable effects of this medium. That leads to both fascination and yearning to understand how to reproduce the effects you liked. Not easy… For left-brainers, it was learning what is achievable with the medium and how to exert (even a minimal) control; for right-brainers it was a pure joy (dopamine surge) just seeing what comes out of an impulsive color mixing and mood-driven movements!   By the middle of the winter it was four of us practicing pouring, towards spring six, and we recently added a 7-year-old inductee who gifted more of her paintings than all of the others combined.

After an initial hyper productivity, we settled into occasional pouring sessions to satisfy the need for almost instant creation, for an experiment…Is it an art?  It can be done by anyone and results could be quite stunning…if these stimulate discussion, admiration, critique, unexpected visual experience …why would it matter ? 

In keeping with our ‘enhancement through combining different art media’ practice, we use these fascinating pouring images to illustrate poems and prose, create posters, depict music…and, occasionally, to dedicate a full wall or two to display them combined, telling unexpected ‘stories’..

Here is a glimpse (opus too large to show everything) into few of our pouring art stories.