This painted metal wall art sculpture is hand painted with colorful enamel paint. Since 1992 I have been sculpting welded metal figure sculpture. Durring this time i would clean the finished metal sculpture the best i could with wire brushes or sandblasting. I would then apply a good quality clear enamel spraypaint. This protected the metal sculpture from the elements, made it clean to touch and gave it a glossy apearance. It also let the nice natural color of the raw metal show through.
      It was'nt  untill 1997 that i decided to paint two large outdoor commissioned sculptures. They turned out realy well but i wasnt committed to the process for some reason. I continued to leave my sculpted artworks colorless to keep the integrity of the bare metal look and to not be distracted away fro form with color.
      An artist painted canvas that hangs on the wall is one artistic discipline. Sculpture is very different in the sense that the artist is dealing with A volumetric three dimentional object as oposed to a flat surface.  Its much more difficult to compose paint on  A sculpture than it is to paint a flat painting. I realy needed to study what i was doing sculpturaly and adding paint just threw me off. It was sort of like breaking a hunger fast with a twinkie. It didnt sit right. 
     This artwork titled "Mystery" was intended right from the start to have a colorful painting on it. I thought about it for a long time and finaly figured out how to make it work.

The nickle plating is a very nice look for a small metal sculpture. It looks similar to the raw polished steel but a little brighter. This piece was plated at a plating company in San Jose California. The piece is chemically cleaned then plated. It has a very clean and chrome-like look. 
   

        Here is a half scale horse sculpture. It is an American Saddlebred. I used the same silhouette template from a commissioned horse sculpture but decided to go with very thick recycled metal parts. I intended that this piece could naturaly patina with a rustic look and still last forever out in the ellements.
      Odviously no surface coating was used in this piece.  The beauty here is that the rust can go to town on this piece and it will never look any different. It is also maintenance free.

Adding paint and color to my work has been challenging. for the first 23 years of doing this sort of sculpture i have mostly just clearcoated the metal to let the look of the material speak for itsself.
     Here you can see the difference with just the clearcoat lacquor vs. the color lacquor. I realy love the raw metal look and it is somewhat a different animal, no pun intended, than the painted look. I reald did miss the excitement paint and color offers so here im happy to say im very content with the finnished look.