Dix-Huit Pretties

Dix-Huit Pretties

$750.00

Dix-Huit Pretties (2020) 42” x 24"

Eighteen little red flowers made with a bang, each attached to beautiful, energized stems. The overriding impact of this image is made by the beauty of super slow and high-speed fuses along with cannon grade gunpowder blasted onto a light blue panel.

The name, Dix-Huit Pretties is French for 18 Pretties. I’ve never been to France, but they look like they came from there. The name sounds cool (“DEES-WHEET PRETTIES) and looks cool, too. And just to be sure, I counted, there are eighteen unique, exploded, beautiful flowers.

Several "moves" were involved (painting, burning, exploding, scraping, brushing, and burning again). Flames and sparks engulfed the piece. Smoke clouded the scene.  The flowers were finished with hand-held, super-slow burning fuse.

Primitive, modern, and abstract - a Stick Vega original.  

American gunpowder artist, Vega places powder and fuses on the surface of the board, which he positions horizontally on the floor. When ignited, first the fuses burns instantly along the cord lines, igniting the gunpowder and creating loud bangs and flashes of fire, which then vanish in clouds of smoke. The result is a textured surface that looks and feels like an explosion—the acrylic paint on panel is blackened, charred, and erupted, arrested in a state of being created in a flash.

When the fuse is lit there a moment of uncertainty. What will happen? It is at that moment that true art exists.

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