The Mandarin

This was an interesting painting, and kind of a departure for me, because it's done on this stuff called yupo paper. Yupo is neat. It's like plastic. It's the most synthetic stuff imaginable. You can't tear it. And--here's the interesting thing--it doesn't absorb water. At all. Dump water on it it, and it just sits in a puddle on the surface. This makes it a truly cool surface for doing watercolors, because there is absolutely no absorption--you just leave the puddle there and it eventually evaporates and dries on the surface. Don't like it? A dash of water and you're back to paper white again. Do a whole painting and hate it? Go into the shower, and you've got a clean sheet again. It's truly bizarre. So, as an experiment, just a woman in a mandarin jacket with a fan. I had to get it framed almost in self-defense--even the sweat on my fingertips was lifting pigment every time I moved it. But damn, it's cool stuff.