Glass Painting

Glass Painting

By Wren Panzella

Look for her work in upcoming August issue of  The Woven Tale Press

Glass transfer painting is a practice dating back to the Middle Ages, in which paint is applied directly to glass and viewed from the unpainted side. Since a painting on glass is particularly fragile, I use a technique invented by the artist Robert Cartmell, for transferring paint from glass. In this a process, polymer is used to adhere the back of the painting to paper or canvas, and left to dry for twenty-four hours.

The paper or canvas is briefly submerged in a pan of water, before carefully peeled away from the less adhesive glass. What I find most interesting about glass painting is that the initial impressions and marks are closest to the surface – in glass painting, you are working from the foreground to the background. The fact that the underpainting is added last, allows for greater possibilities and a deepening of the composition. It is like turning a painting inside out:

001 002 003 004 006 013 014 015 019 The Other Pieces Glass transfer painting 2013 20 x 43

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