Peace Lutheran Church

Worship: Sundays at 10 AM
Address: 3201 Camino Tassajara, Danville, CA 94506

John A. Barry P6 and trAction Painting

John A. Barry’s P6 and trAction Painting Exhibit

Curated by Bill Carmel

On Display through Early April

Opening Reception with Jazz Church West

On Sunday, March 3rd, at 5:00 pm

FivePlay Jazz Quintet with Tony Corman

Photo of John A. Barry standing in front of two P6 works of art.

John Barry with two P6 pieces in the Peace Sanctuary.

 

Artist Sprayment [sic] John A. Barry

Over the course of several years, I developed a couple of painting genres/techniques, both on display in this exhibit.

P6.  (Projectile Precipitated Propellant Painting Performative Process).  After conceiving this process, in 2022, I constructed a 4 x 4 x 4-foot frame.  I cover the tops and sides of said frame with canvas and/or cardboard; the back wall is composed of particle board.  The front wall is canvas with a peephole (or cardboard on which I measure and mark the position of the can and then shoot through the cardboard).  I place objects I wish to paint (canvas boards, stretched canvases, clothing, furniture, etc.)  inside the covered frame, call the Pigmilion (Pigment Pavilion).  From its ceiling, I suspend cans of aerosol paint (one at a time) on a string stalactite.  To release the pressurized paint, I shoot the cans with a pellet rifle, through the canvas peephole or the marked cardboard.  Although I can exercise a little control of the spray pattern (primarily by placement of the can), the results are almost entirely stochastic (random).  So some efforts turn out better than others.  A small quantity of paint remains in the cans; sometimes I dribble it onto a canvas.  The pellets are embedded in the particle board, which also gets painted in the process.

 

trAction Painting.  I employ the trAction technique, created in 2011, to apply paint to large surfaces, using bikes, wheelchairs, scooters, and skates as my “brushes.”  Paint flows onto each vehicle’s wheels as I propel the vehicle across a large horizontal surface.  My largest trAction canvas is 20 x 12 feet.  The name is a play on Action Painting, a form of Abstract Expressionism, and the need to have traction when hard plastic skate.scooter wheels meet viscous, slippery acrylic paint.

 

I created most of the works in this exhibit with P6, although some of them contain elements of trAction Painting.  My website–focusing at this point only on trAction–is traction-painting.com.

 

A photo of artist John A. Barry riding a bike on a large canvas to create a trAction painting.

John Barry creating a trAction painting