Systemic began as mixed media drawing on mahogany ply. The colour of the mahogany was established as the middle tone. The dark tone was created using graphite and the highlight is chalk. This method of drawing was called Chiaroscuro.

My first impulse was to obliterate the drawing with impasto acrylic in the Prairie Expressionist method of Maxwell Bates.

There have been many new acrylic mediums developed since the first acrylic painters and their impasto interpretation of the paint. I first saw the "clear coats" and tinted clear coats of acrylic in custom automobile paint shops. More recently contemporary abstract applications of acrylic mediums have been appearing in commercial art galleries and books about the new acrylics. I decided to try to integrate the new mediums with representational and figurative painting.

These paintings are painterly and can not be reproduced with photo-graphy. Supplying detail images of the panels became a necessity so that a viewer could get a visual feel of the surface.

Through knowledge gained during interactive master email classes conducted online with Varda Sharon Kramer I began using "impasto gel" (misnamed because it dries clear) tinted with colour in a thick and sculptural glaze technique applied with palette knives. The two primary explorations of the Systemic series had been established: impasto textures and transparent glaze.

Varda also introduced me to "self leveling gel" which combined with a small amount of pigment and applied over previously applied textures such as nepheline gel (acrylic pigmented with nepheline grains) and mixed with drying retarder has the effect of allowing the tinted self leveling gel to pull down from the heights of the texture and to settle into pools between the textural peaks. I painted on the easel and on a horizontal surface.

Rather than using gesso to prepare the panel for acrylic I applied acrylic modeling paste ( white marble dust in thick acrylic) with knives, sponges, wood grain texture tools, and paint rollers to make a textured base which usually isn't representative and does not comply to the imagery.

The Chiaroscuro drawing came into conflict with the underlying textures. It is impossible to draw tonally on heavy texture like cheese cloth laminated to the panel with modeling paste. Instead I mixed gray scales of paint which could operate as an under painting for later glazes.

I introduced metallic and plastic flakes suspended in the acrylic. Metal flake painting was first explored by custom car painters. Flakes, flecks, glitter, interference, and iridescent pigments are now available in commercially prepared acrylic mediums (safe from becoming air-borne). Glitter does not still photograph. The camera captures only one moment and one perspective of the viewer animated glittering surface.