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2 JB Oh I'd say more than that. Ten or twelve years something like that. EV Quote from Sam Hunter book....... I would like to use this quote in whatever I write about you......... Now I think this refers to your work at every [[strikethrough]] stage [[/strikethrough]] phase you have been in and also your new work ...because you do ..it is always an asthetic exposure and you do bring it to new points of refinement...as your work changes every time and I feel that the work you are doing now since the exhibition Twenty-one Over Sixty...was that 72 or 73, from that time... that marvelous orange painting that I love so much there seems to be a new change... a new development in your work. you are bringing this in and refining it in a new way and I really would like to ask you to discuss your new work if you would. JB Yes I would like to..if I can...Of course that painting that you're speaking of..that large light colored one..the orange one will be something that I will come back to once in a while all my work has been a cycling sort of a thing..I go back to former forms and I don't ever seem to be able to work in oh a format or set group of work or style or pattern ...in fact I can't seem to remain interested in it and the changes that occur are an attempt to stay interested or remain alive that's all.. That incorporated some of my earlier work in it I think..a good deal more than some of my recent black things and then on some of the smaller paintings they very much like some of the earlier paintings, some of the stained paintings I did..very thin and on absorbent canvas..but lately I have been working on black grounds almost completely. EV You're working with acrylics now. JB I have been working in acrylics a long while. I worked first with poly-vinyl acetate when it first came out which was quite a few years ago when I was with the Stable Gallery but that was a little less flexible medium and a little harder to handle..sometimes blues didn't retain its freshness and it wasn't as elastic but it was superceded very quickly by commercial paint as well as by art paints by acrylics..the roplex medium which was used with the dry pigment to make a very flexible acrylic paint, which many artists use now. But anyway, I am using this stuff...are you interested in this.... EV Yes I am. JB I am very interested in the black grounds I have been using lately. You can't always tell by the end result, but there is a black ground. The acrylic is very good for that because it doesn't have the aging quality that oil paint does ..the suppronification (?) which means the transparency..turning to soap which oil, linseed oil can do.. and so then it doesn't go on through to the ground again. it stays opaque. I am working a little more on what you might call a Venetian technique which they worked on a dark ground with _______ white over it and worked into that with transparencicies or sometimes thickness. Sometimes what I do with this black. I haven't thought of that, the relation to it to the Venetians until very recently, but it is the same thing. The technique that Titian or Tintoretto used.did use. I always liked their work and the pace of that suits me a little better than the very fast application of paint. I can put washes [[strikethrough]] on the black or or is is [[/strikethrough]] Of the black on the white or washes of the white on the black and then thicker, build it up more gradually and let it flow more. I have always liked to work with liquid paint and I can do that very well with that paint. and so painting evolves sometimes into a very light colored painting with a great deal of white in it and very often largely black with just black and white. EV Some of them were such beautiful colors...and all of those were started on a black ground. I really wasn't aware of it. I did know that the one one..now is this your way of working that you tack the canvas to the wall and work flat against the wall rather than like on an easel that might be tilted. JB I started on the floor because I am working with very liquid
