Improvised Paintings in Ink on Paper (Automatink)

A thirteen year cycle from 1993-2006.
Starting with New Years Eve Paintings (which Bittleston continues), and culminating with the Dream Collaboration paintings Residency in 2006.

Most active in 1997 and 2003/2004 when Bittleston made hundreds of ink paintings, more...

Influenced by "lead pouring" (Bleigiessen), East Asian Ink wash painting and traditional watercolor techniques, which Bittleston studied with Edith Smith and by notoriously going though every art book in Stanford Library in alpabetical order.

Each of these works is a unique improvisation, in a medium that stains the paper on contact.
As Bittleston puts it: "Ink painting has the immediacy, and vulnerability of performance. Each work is an adventure, the risk is to set out without knowing and let my hands to the thinking. At the heart of exploration is the allure of the unknown. It is a game of flirting with future. The paper is the future and the ink is the past, their interaction is the present.
There is a moment before I make a mark when anything could happen, I imagine that same limitlessness was there before the big bang, as god tokk a breath before saying 'let there be light'... then, as ink meets paper, the future is happening, faster than I can take it all in, I am just observing as the painting paints itself."

These works bring together two distinct elements. One of risk and spontaneous expression, the other of controlled planning and meticulous detail. In the mature works from 2003 and 2004 it is hard to tell the difference. Was that abstract shape a fast gestural splatter, or was it obsessively built up from a thousand tiny brush strokes?

Bittleston was familiar with Japanese technique of Kirifuki/Fukibokashi and misted ink with a Mouth Atomizer - found in the varnishing section of the art store, it is the "Medieval" equivalent of a spray can, you blow into one end of two small tubes that meet in a right angle - this device is hard to use and results are often unpredictable, which probably appealed to Bittleston, he wrote that he likes "the idea of painting with his breath".

Bittleston's predeterminate counterpoint to the unpredictable spraying was replicating spray textures by fastidiously painting each dot of the spray by hand. This method of reducing the ink paintings down to points, like pixels or particles, gave rise to some of his strongest work that juxtaposes broad, wet brush strokes that seem to be wielded by the hand of chaos itself, with purposefully building up transparent layers into fine textures and hard edges that melt into soft gradients.

Bittleston's concept of deconstructing improvisation, by slowing it down, is continued in the multi-year dot drawings of "82 Dreamscapes".