Dropcloth as art

Some years ago, I realized that whether I pay attention or not, the cloth I wipe my brushes on can be seen as a work of art. Upon reflection, my awareness of where to put attention while painting started more than 50 years ago, when I took brushpainting lessons:

Fifty years ago,  I took a Chinese brush-painting from Charlie Leong, who had taught Gary Snyder in the 1950s. My first sessions consisted of loading the brush with water and painting on stacks of newspaper. Then I spent time learning to make ink from an inkstick and water. In brush-painting, the painter spends more time and puts more conscious thought into making the ink and loading the brush than in the brush strokes, which are supposed to be spontaneous and dance-like. In recent years, painting with acrylics, when thinning tube pigment to the right consistency by mixing it with water, I've been practicing putting as much awareness into the mixing and the loading of the brush as I put into the painting -- which is slower, more deliberate, constrained, and exacting than brush painting.

I've been using watercolor paper as the dropcloth for my experiments with splatter painting. Eventually, it becomes it's own kind of work of art. The splatter painting is an exercise on the edge of control/out-of-control, and so is the dropcloth. At a certain point, it begins to look like a painting, so I begin to put more attention into it. Eventually, I start treating it as a painting and begin splattering it directly. It isn't easy to capture the look in a photograph, as it consists of layers on layers on layers.