New Development: Finding the Light in the Layers
- Rachel Robbins
- May 13
- 7 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
My usual portrait practice is an act of meditation and subtraction. With soft pastel and charcoal, I lay down dust and shadow, then begin to erase. I rub and soften, lift and pull back. Eventually, a face appears, followed by a dance of animals. The delicate crew turns up to the tea party not because I forced them, forward but because I removed with a light touch. It is less about making, more about listening. This is where I go when I'm dousing for a Soul&Vision Portrait. To be honest, sometimes it's a little to serious, and I'm drained afterward. No doubt a flow state, but also, it's not the most grounded or grounding, and you sometimes get lost in space.
So when I turned to oil pastel Sgraffito, I knew I was stepping into a flip-floppy, prayer in negative space. Instead of erasing toward light, I would bury the board in color and carve my way back to it, then out, then back in. I wasn't going to a flyaway, I wanted to stay here and stand my ground, but you know, I wasn't sure where or how to begin. There would be no light touch. Soft eraser would be replaced with sharp and pointy tools. Edgy and bold. Sticky fingers, when dusty is my safe texture. We'd see. I'd gotten to a point with heavy medium that my art came from a more shadowy place inside. And I straight-up wasn't as "good" at it.
Maybe I'm still afraid of the dark.
Some tools of the trade. I like a white bottom layer, then pale yellow, then goldenrod, up and up.
The First Layer: Hesitation
My first piece was overly cautious. As a result, it came out so horribly that I'm too embarrassed to post it. I did snap a photo, but don't have the original. [I cut it up into heart shapes and used for little Valentines, so...not a total loss.] Yeah, I was visualizing clay (and handling my materials with the same nervous touch), which is what first comes to mind when we think of the s'graffito technique. Which is rather sacred of me, when what I needed to be thinking of was MUD, and play, and enjoying myself rather than about restraint. About not scratching too hard and ruining what I had built. I used my big swatty brush to graze "crumbs" away far too often and lost so much of the potential for that kaleidoscope by not leaving my waxy crumbs where they were before my next mark .
So I moved on to the second piece, which was a little free-r, but still....I was hanging on pretty tight. The board (which had cost nothing, and which was just fine and dandy and well-behaved) felt fragile and important under my hands. I treated it like something that could shatter. The piece took hours, and time didn't become irrelevant, as it does when I get lost in a piece. Flow came in brief flickers, and then I was back to being self aware and too important. To be honest, I do like the finished work. It is quiet. Ethereal. Still searching.
The Small Teacher
The next night, my art coach arrived.
He is six years old, and was thrilled by the scraps we were using for our surfaces. I like repurposing cuts of mat board from Berry's Stationer's, a local art and frame shop [support local businesses]. They get rid of basketfulls of scraps for cheap or free. Like I said. The ones I was getting so anxious about bending and tearing. Those scraps.
We worked side-by-side at the table. I watched as my grandson layered color upon color without pause. Crimson over indigo. Teal over gold. Press harder. Add more. Cover it. Scratch it. Smudge it with your whole hand. Mucky and chocolate and cherry slime.
He was not afraid of the mud.
I handed him a metal stencil of Celtic knots I sometimes keep at the edges of my own compositions if I'm designing a tarot-type thingy. Too obvious, I’ve always thought, as far as using them as something fully integrated into a piece.
He placed them boldly in the center with no overthinking, I felt something loosen in me, and followed his lead.
How often do we abandon what delights us because it feels too direct? Too sincere? Too visible?
He did not hesitate.
So why do I?
The Sound of Becoming
As the evening unfolded, something shifted.
The room filled with texture and sound —the slick drag of wax against board,the soft thwupp of smudging pigment with warm palms,the tiny clicks of metal tools scratching through layers.
“Feel how smooth that is, Baba,” he said, taking my hand and pressing it to the surface of his painting, which was thick, buttery, alive.
Meanwhile, in the background, YouTube was our deejay. We hummed his favorite music, namely The Muppets and their guest stars "cozily" performing hits of the 1970s-80s. John Denver and a bunch of singing plants' rendition of Dave Mallet's "The Garden Song" drifted through the room. Sometimes we sang along, as well, making up the words when we didn't know the next line.
We did not need conversation.
The rhythm was enough.
Side-by-side, we entered that gentle place (beneath thought, beyond doubt) where the body remembers how to make before the mind interferes. Inch by inch, row by row.
"The Garden Song" fits into this story later.
Mister Biscuit's paintings aren't in the correct order, but I can't figure out how to fix the grid, here without deleting my uploaded photos; I'm sorry :(
The Willingness to Bury
By the final piece, I stopped trying to keep things clean. Pressed harder. Layered thicker. Let the colors collapse into one another. Let the board disappear under the weight of it all. I let it get mucky.
So here is some quiet truth S'graffito and six-year-olds teach:
You can't scratch your way to light unless you are willing to lay down the dark first and go for the bendy-breaky. The etched lines appear because of the density beneath them, so dig in. Light is not added. It is revealed through, poking, prodding, rubbing, scratching, and giving some positive pressure to that negative space. Self development turns up unexpectedly in these little gestures, tiny places... you give, you take away....
Somewhere between Mister Biscuits fearless chonking and my surrender to the process, the work changed. Colors deepened, forms emerged with less strain. The energy within the work grew less ghostly and more "embodied."
I was no longer protecting the surface.
Art as Anchor
For him, that evening was steadiness in the middle of a loud week; a quiet power he could hold in his hands. For me, it was grounding while freeing. The thick wax, repetition of motion, rhythm of scratch and reveal, all untangling and settling my nervous system.
For us as a pair, it was a bridge.
No explanations. No correcting. No performing beyond our folksy duet. Humming along with the thistles, watermelons, and enjoying the scritchy ASMR sounds beneath our tools.
Two sets of hands, moving through layers. Cutting and scraping to free up, rebuild, open'.
On the Other Side of Flow
There's a calm that settles after creative bravery, a steady stillness following a deep dive into experience, the smell of a song sung by singing stuffy carrots and cabbages.
I'd noticed in recent months how my work has grown lighter. Softer. More restrained. There is beauty in that. When you're pretty much self-taught (maybe wandering around in the shadows of an art minor) trying to shut down that imposter syndrome, studying clunky art books until your eyes dry, haunting gallery hallways, drawing, painting, watching free lessons, hounding any artist you know for tips, feeling your way into some technique, realizing you've almost put in those 10,000 is a triumphant thing. You find yourself clinging to the new control, especially if your life is scattered. Maybe I should lose the second person, here since I'm not really talking about you at this point, am I? Maybe I am.
Watching this boy, I remembered something essential:
Creation still requires risk, revelation requires depth, and light requires something solid enough to carve through.
Sometimes our teachers arrive before they learn to doubt themselves.
Sometimes the invitation back to courage comes in small hands covered in wax.
Lay down the color. Press harder than feels comfortable.Let it get muddy.
Trust that the light is already there, waiting beneath the layers.
Scratch bravely. Reveal with curiosity. Get excited. Sing a song.
Begin again.
A portrait of the artist as a young man. And one of his many new fans at Boothbay Regional Art Gallery..
The Garden Song
Unexpected twist from when I started writing this blog post back in February:
The Young Teacher's six panels lent themselves to a cohesive work. He asked me to bring his paintings to the Boothbay Regional Art Foundation Gallery right after he finished. I told him that wasn't quite how it worked, but once again, I was wrong. After framing in rustic wood, I submitted them to the April Flower Show, as they worked as line-by-line illustrations to the opening chorus to The Garden Song.
Reception night, The Flower Show, Boothbay Regional Art Gallery
Here was the submitted description, in case you're curious:
Inch by Inch (Row by Row)
Narrative Polyptic/Lyrical Storyboard
Oil pastel on repurposed mat board
[Inspired by Dave Mallet’s “Garden Song”, as performed by John Denver]
A six-panel lyrical storyboard presented as a single vertical work, comprised of two stacked triptych frames. To be installed vertically as a continuous narrative sequence.
Panel #1:
Inch by inch, row by row
Panel #2:
Gonna make this garden grow/ All it takes is a rake and a hoe
Panel #3:
And a piece of fertile ground
Panel #4:
Inch by inch, row by row/ Someone bless these seeds I sow
Panel #5:
Someone warm them from below
Panel #6:
’Til the rain comes tumbling down.
Who knew?
Mister Biscuit, that's who.
Frankly, I thought BRAF all knew who he was, as I'd brought him to shows with me in the past and had introduced him, but apparently they didn't put us together (we have different last names), and his work was hung on the most desirable wall. And they sold before the opening reception.
Drop me a line if you want a 1:1 S'graffito mini-class (We'll be working about 90 minutes together.) It's very satisfying. I travel up to an hour and bring all tools of the trade: pastels, upcycled mat, drawing boards, dropcloth (we're probably working on your floor), all my sharp scritchy's, brushes, etc. And spray mica because I can't seem to put it down.
xo,
Rach
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