About PETER MAIER
THE HISTORY & DEVELOPMENT OF HIS MULTI-LAYERING PROCESS.
Back in 1993, Dupont Paint Division met with Peter Maier in their World Headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware. Peter Maier was invited to show his work and to ask if they would give him samples of their newly produced experimental waterborne automotive paint with which he hoped to utilize as his new fine art paint medium on fabricated aluminum panels.
Their top executives told him that in the history of Dupont the company had never released an experimental product to anyone outside of Dupont single supplying gun powder for the American Revolutionary War. However, after seeing what Peter Maier had in mind and knowing he left his secure position as Senior Designer for Cadillac, Pontiac, and Chevrolet Motor Divisions, they decided to give him 54 quarts of hand mixed samples–and this was done on a handshake alone with no corporate lawyers present since they did not want anyone to be aware of their product until its release 3 years from that time.
Over the years Dupont sold the paint division to Axalta Coatings and with Peter Maier being involved with both companies, they have combined in giving him over 250 thousand dollars worth of the paint.
THE PROCESS
Being a former car designer, Peter Maier saw a relationship between his art and the waterborne automotive paint. Basically he wanted to apply industrial paint technology to fine art and be the first artist ever to produce life size paintings of famous automobiles using these paints on aluminum panels. Since then, his subjects have grown to the human, the animal, and the inanimate.
Over the years, Peter Maier has experimented and developed what he refers to as his “multi-layering process” in that he now uses only 8 pure colors plus white to produce each and every color you see on the finished paintings.
No colors are pre-mixed. Example: Blue over yellow to produce green.
Each color is thinned down to the consistency he wants, then sprayed or painted on the panel. Then another color is applied over that color, and so on, so each color shows through and the colors never “muddy out” as they would with oils and acrylics. At times, he uses his fingers, hands, or sea sponges to achieve the textures he wants as his under painting. The painting appears to be abstract at these early and middle stages, and only as he nears the final brush work does it begin to breathe and come to life. Then more layers and brush work are added until perhaps as many as 75 to over 100 transparent layers are used until he feels the painting is at the point for the final clear coating.
Then he clear coats the panel with high end automotive clear to produce a saturation and depth of color, a show car surface finish, and almost 3D effect which is not at all possible with traditional paint mediums.
The process is totally abstract and unorthodox in its execution – simple to understand yet difficult to execute.