I build and cover my stretcher frames myself. This allows me to decide spontaneously, depending on the motif and colour concept, what kind of surface is best suited. Initially I covered the stretcher frames exclusively with white pre-primed, smooth canvas, but for some time now I have relied almost exclusively on raw fabric. This gives me the freedom to decide whether I want to build up my painting on a white, black or coloured background, whether I want to apply the background opaquely and in several layers or whether I want to keep the fabric colour and structure visible and thus use it as a further design element.
Lately I have been using mostly raw, tightly woven linen fabric with a rough surface texture and for large format paintings of one square metre or more I have recently started to use jute. Jute is a bit coarser and a bit more loosely woven than the linen I use. Initially I had some trouble finding the right painting technique and tools for this surface. In the meantime, however, I have gained some experience and painted first results that convince me technically. The fact is, however, that raw jute is very absorbent and more paint is needed than on a linen surface. That's why the palette knife, for example, is a very good painting tool.
And by the way, if I don't like a painting (which happens often), it's a simple matter to strip the canvas and re-stretch the stretcher for a new attempt. Lately, I have also started to paint over paintings that I don't like. This can give a painting an extra depth, as usually the underlying layers still remain partially visible in my paintings. The very idea that there is another, sometimes completely different, painting underneath a painting is somehow exciting to me.
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