Fellow abstractionist and studio mate, John Brown (1953-2020), was known for a slow painting process of applying oil paint to a panel and scraping it off to leave a residual history of the work, taking up to a year to create some of his paintings. Seemingly an opposite approach to Poldaas’, who decided on the parameters of a painting before execution, worked serially, and sometimes on several canvases at once. They shared a dedication to a deeply meticulous practice. Brown met Poldaas at Mercer Union, where he became active and a board member in the 1980s.
