Paint splatter the world

Messy can be inspiring.

There was an article in a 2017 issue of T magazine that made me realize I really wasn’t alone.

“It seemed as magical as the scallop shells I painted with glitter nail polish each day after the beach,” wrote Alexa Brazilian. The magic Brazilian was talking about was a paint-splattered floor from house on Nantucket she lived in briefly as a child. The article, “In Praise of Paint Splatter,” was one of the first times I’d encountered anybody writing about something I’d also been obsessed with for most of my life. Like Brazilian, I have a memory from childhood of walking over a floor with a random army of paint spots on the floor in the garage of a house I didn’t live in long, but the memory of all the little dots and dashes stuck with me. I remember very specifically seeing some picture of Jean-Michel Basquiat standing next to one of his paintings, his clothes reminding me of the floor from that childhood home, all covered in paint, rendered useless besides for standing over a canvas with a brush in hand. He couldn’t possibly wear that out, right? When I learned that, in many cases, he did actually wear Armani suits covered in paint for a night on the town, I started to think Basquiat was really onto something that I wanted to explore a little more.

It feels silly to say I’ve been obsessed with paint splatter my entire life, but that seems to be the case. So obsessed, that I went and found a copy of the book mentioned in Brazilian’s piece, The Complete Book of Interior Decorating by Mary Derieux and Isabelle Stevenson from 1948. The book itself is a fun little read with mostly black and white photos of decorating ideas from the early days of the post-war era, but I had honestly purchased a copy in hopes of finding out more about paint splatter and where it came from, but the truth was Brazilian’s piece serves as a better historical overlook of how paint splatter caught on:

As an unusually whimsical artifact of Yankee heritage, the technique is a geeky aficionado’s dream, complete with its own fabled beginnings that still remain a bit of a mystery. The technique was preceded by the 18th- and 19th-century practice of floor stenciling, a craft that emerged among settlers longing for carpets like those in Europe. In the early 1800s, in New England particularly, traveling stencil artisans went from village to village, using oiled paper cutouts of primitive stars, pineapples and even trompe l’oeil rug designs, applying them with linseed oil or milk-based pigment paint in colors like Prussian blue, lead chromite yellow and ocher brown.

The article gets into the how the early popularity of another trend that has made a comeback in recent years, “speckleware,” helped make paint-splattered floors more of a thing, but ends up reinforcing that the trend can trace its roots back to New England. So now whenever I’m out in New England, I’m always on the lookout.

My obsession goes a little beyond floors, however. That picture of Basquiat, any picture of Jackson Pollock, hell, seeing a painter in the wild with formerly white Sherman-Williams pants covered in all kinds of colors is something I’m immediately drawn to. When I recently got my copy of Charlie Porter’s excellent What Artists Wear, the first thing I did was go to the chapter “Paint on Clothing,” and read up on Jack Whitten and how he got paint on his shoes every day, “It was intentional,” Porter writes. Artists and footwear caked in old paint come up a few pages later when Porter mentions a pair of paint-covered shoes he saw on the Pollock Krasner House and Study Center that he assumed were Pollock’s, but turned out to be Lee Krasner’s.

The good news is that these are great times for people who want to wear paint. Just see the recent END. x Levi’s “Painted” collaboration. Selvedge denim “updated with colourful paint splatters for a flourish of contemporary aesthetics,” it looks great, but it’s not something I’d likely buy. I do love stuff with paint on it, but the look is peak DIY. I know there are a lot of jokes about “stolen valor” when it comes to people who didn’t serve in the armed forces rocking army gear or people dressing like they’re going to work in a factory when their title is actually creative director or something like that, but I personally don’t mind those looks. I’m guilty of rocking some camo or work boots, so I can’t really talk too much smack there. But it just seems wrong to spend extra money to let somebody else pour paint on a pair of pants or a shirt. It’s a waste of money, sure. But you’re also missing out on a lot of fun.

That’s probably my favorite pair of pants I own. Emily calls them my “kicking around” pants, and that does sum up the purpose of the pair of roomy Lands’ End chinos that I got on sale and decided to use exclusively for when I’m painting on my roof. I lay out a big blue tarp and just mess around, nothing serious. But the accidental accumulation of paint on khaki makes me really happy. So much so that I’ve gotten increasingly comfortable wearing stuff I get paint on outside of the apartment. I’ve been emboldened by collections like the one between END. and Levi’s, but also felt “seen” when I saw this illustration from the October issue of Men’s Club showing a guy basically wearing my dream uniform look of turtleneck under a sweatshirt, New Balances, Barbour trench coat, a beanie and a pair of pants from NEAT covered in paint.

I wouldn’t call myself an artist when it comes to my painting hobby, but since I read a recent piece by Tony Sylvester at Permanent Style on the iconic, timeless and comfortable looks of artists like Pablo Picasso or Georgia O’Keefe, I find myself thinking more and more about how working in certain pieces of clothes really does inspire me a little more than others. And maybe none more so than my stuff covered in paint. Even when I go from my little makeshift studio back to my writing desk, I find that having on a pair of pants or a sweatshirt with some little dots of blue or orange or gold does sort of make the whole process of being alone with my thoughts a little less mundane. I’m not saying you should pull out your clothes and pour paint over them or anything, but I will say that after all this time working behind computers, not really having any reason to get dressed up to go to meetings or an office, the old idea of a little paint on something might break up the monotony.