Buzz Masters

My work is an investigation of the malleable nature of memory, what we hold onto and what do we leave out in order to make our story. My interest in narrative and with a debt to the history of fresco painting, and that visual form of storytelling, I draw tangled rope and other beach flotsam to symbolize sorting through memory, or ladders and floats as time cessation and rescue, or water rushing through a familiar interior shows, because of grief, how something that was once comforting and familiar becomes unrecognizable and changed.

I continue using wooden panels covered with my recipe of materials that is a nod to the Roman’s genius of plastering. This surface when ground down and sanded creates a smooth, hard, but porous, veneer that reacts with paint having a similar effect as a fresco. Using casein emulsion, acrylic paints, gold leaf, graphite, oil stick, thread, beeswax, nails, varnishes, driftwood, tinted gesso’s, and whatever else I find on my studio tables, allows for much flexibility giving endless potential to heavily layer these materials to make a complex surface. Recently, I have also been working on paper, using mixed media collage. I appreciate paper’s versatility as it allows me to fold, distress, draw and gild. The color and surfaces of my work often refer to influences of early Italian work, but the symbols narrate my current stories.