Venetian Plaster Paintings
By Rab Terry
Venetian plaster is a term that describes a variety of techniques and materials that are used to finish walls. The name comes from wall finishes that were meant to look like marble, for building in Venice, Italy, where concerns about weight of building materials precluded the use of real marble. Historically, these plasters were made of slaked lime, pigments, and some proprietary ingredients that were the secrets of the craftsmen. Today there are a variety of products to create Venetian plaster finishes that have acrylic polymer additives to be more compatible with modern building materials, but exhibit the primary qualities of Venetian plaster.
The main differentiation between Venetian plaster and other plasters is the sheen and translucence that develops from burnishing. Burnishing is a polishing process that can be done with a mild abrasive or with flexible steel blades. When the dull, matte surface is energetically rubbed with the aforementioned items it develops a deeper, richer color, a sheen similar to polished marble, and the marks of application are accentuated.
The panels I make take advantage of these characteristics to produce paintings (Plasterings?) of rich visual texture and coloration. The base of these painting is thin plywood mounted on a stretcher, or cradle. I then begin with layers of glue gesso to prepare the surface for the Venetian plaster layers. Venetian plaster is colored by adding pigments or paint to it, and then it is applied in very thin layers with a flexible stainless steel blade. I will sand between layers to allow the previous color to show through, and to create a very smooth surface. I work with the application of plaster and the sanding to find a balance of color and texture that communicates the feeling that I am try to reproduce. Sometimes this may take 15-20 layers. The surface is then burnished to deepen the color and the depth of the surface. Often I will burnish, then overlay a light layer of plaster that is left unburnished to provide contrast between matte and sheen.
Most of the paintings I do are distillations of a landscape, or a portion of a landscape, working the colors that I associate with a certain place into a kind of “squinty-eyed” representation of the place. The necessity of applying the plaster with straight edge blades dictates the linearity of the designs, but I find this linearity to add a pleasing order to the chaos of color in the fields, and trying to find order in chaos is what I’m all about.
Click here to see images of the Venetian Plaster paintings