Advertisement
Saturday, May 6, 4-8pm, The Vanderelli Room, 218 McDowell St.
Paul Volker is a native of Columbus, where he studied fine art at The Ohio State University. Volker began working as a freelance cartoonist and illustrator at age 20, but shifted to painting a few years later, using mainly recycled house paints on various materials, including rubber, plywood, and even bread.
“I enjoy experimenting with different materials. For me, a painting shouldn’t just be a picture of something, but should be a unique object in itself, on which the picture is placed.”
Volker is known as a prolific artist, having painted and sold more than 3,000 works. His paintings rely heavily on contrast and humor, with cartoon animals having been the main subject in over a thousand small paintings created in a series he calls “Wild Beasts” (a reference to Fauvism).
Where most paintings are done on canvas, Volker uses plywood. He prefers house paints to tube paints. His paintings are designed to hang without frames and many without wires. Whatever is expected, he seems to do the opposite.
About ten years ago, Volker started combining recycled paper pulp and carpenter’s wood glue to make a sculpting compound to apply to his plywood painting surfaces. A few years later, he discovered that this compound would adhere to styrofoam. Volker has always been focused on recycling, and this discovery provided an opportunity to convert plastic pollution into a new art material he jokingly calls “VolkerStone.” His quest to develop new environmentally-friendly art materials hit a new peak in 2019 with the invention of an easy, cheap, and safe way to turn scrap styrofoam into a self-hardening casting putty that any artist can produce.
