A 4" square abstract painting. The background is goldtone metal leaf. Pink, white, and blue paint smear the foreground. Plastic and Styrofoam scraps are barely visible in the mess.
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Trash Paintings

ByRay Bernoff

Trash Paintings, 2020-ongoing

Mixed media art waste (often including acrylic, PVA glue, paper, cardboard, and Sculptamold) on canvas board

In my series ‘Trash Paintings’, I only use materials left over from other art projects—unused acrylic paint lingering on the palette, sheets of half-dried glue from the morning after a papier-mache session, snippets of cardboard picked off the floor. Creating with waste emboldens me to explore textures and compositions I’m scared will be ugly. What’s the worst that could happen? It’s already trash.

See this series’ extension, Community Trash, here.

Paintings from this series appeared in the ArtsWorcester Eleventh Annual One and Scaled Down.

See more of my art.

A tall, narrow, small abstract red and purple painting on a piece of plywood.
Trash Painting #12.5
A 3" by 7" wood panel painted in a rainbow from top to bottom, hazed with multicolor glitter glue.
Trash Painting #15
A 24" by 36" multimedia painting. The background is green with red and blue spilled over it. The bottom half is full of paint-splotched art trash -- empty paint tubes, paper towels, gloves, bits of foam, and so forth, which spill upwards through the composition.
Trash Painting #13
A 5" square abstract painting. The background is white. Swirls of translucent pink paint fill most of the canvas.
Trash Painting #14
A 5" square abstract painting. The background is black. Streaks of goldtone metal leaf burst out from a red spot in the top right corner.
Trash Painting #15
A 4" square abstract painting. The background is goldtone metal leaf. Pink, white, and blue paint smear the foreground. Plastic and Styrofoam scraps are barely visible in the mess.
Trash Painting #11
A 4" square abstract painting covered with heavily textured blobs of white, purple, red, and blue paint.
Trash Painting #12
A 4" square abstract painting. It is mostly sky blue. A brown tree-trunk-like line divides the painting. Scraps of red plastic tape and chunks of white and orange dried paint are scattered over the surface.
Trash Painting #9
A 4" square abstract painting. Deep purplish red surrounds the outside like a vignette, fading to bright red and then muddy yellow and green in the center. Emerging from the paint is whitish, pearly paper and a scrap of maroon embroidery floss.
Trash Painting #10
A 6" tall vertical abstract relief painting. Its dark blue and blackish green texture resembles a mountain range seen from above. The top half of the painting is taken up by a large bright yellow circle of paint mixed with dried glue.
Trash Painting #5
A 6" tall vertical abstract painting. The canvas is mainly black and metallic gray, with drips of bright yellow. A reliefed area resembling a pile of metallic slag fills the bottom of the painting. Just above that, an orange circle of dried paint is stuck to the canvas.
Trash Painting #6
A 6" tall vertical abstract painting. Brushstrokes of pastel green, blue, yellow, lavender, and pink contrast with a field of bright red in the upper right corner. A lavender cloud floats in front of the red, and opposite that, a projecting piece of purple paint resembles berry-filled bird poop.
Trash Painting #7
A 6" tall vertical abstract painting. The background is pale orange and pink. Scraped smears of bright orange and white paint rise up from the bottom. Daubs of pearly finish brighten the composition, punctuated with a the moonlike round of a foam bottle seal.

Trash Painting #8
A 6" tall vertical abstract painting. It is mostly green and light blue with an irregular glossy finish. The top two thirds are drippy and streaky. At the bottom, paint scraps, glitter, and the occasional rhinestone appear piled and layered.
Trash Painting #1
A 6" tall vertical abstract painting. It has a gray background with drippy streaks of red and yellow. At the bottom, dried chunks of red and yellow paint mingle with transparent pieces of dried glue.
Trash Painting #2
A 6" tall vertical abstract relief painting. It is mostly yellow. A lump of paper clay, partly painted red, bulges from the bottom. An empty tube of Super Glue is stuck to the top right corner.
Trash Painting #3
A 6" tall vertical abstract painting. It has a diagonal composition with streaks of white, pale and dark blue, brown, red, and bright yellow flowing up and to the right. The painting has a thick impasto texture.
Trash Painting #4

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