impasto

plural impastos

1. countableuncountablepaintingThe use of a thick-bodied paint to create peaks and crests that physically extend from the surface of a painting.

   He was thinking, ʽGot to get a subject where a man can weight the impasto in light. Paint thin against light. Got to remember that.ʼ

   1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 63

   2 more examples

   […]all got scumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the seasons, to an impasto, feet thick, of unbelievable black topsoil in which anything could grow, not the least being bananas.

   1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, 1st US edition, New York: Viking Press, →ISBN, part 1: Beyond the Zero, page 5

   These dully schematic yet sentimental misfortunes surround Van Gogh's “Sower”. He ploughs on, figure accentuated in deep impasto, across a field cast in blue shadow, chrome yellow corn merging with the sun.

   2025 September 13, Jackie Wullschläger, “Portal to an abstract future or dry dead end?”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 15

present singular third person impastoes · participle present impastoing · participle past impastoed · past impastoed

1. paintingTo paint in thick-bodied paint; to paint in impasto style.

   "She looked tall to me, and slim, with delicate Semitic features, and a full mouth that she impastoed with red lipstick to play against her […]"

   1991, Joyce Nakamura, Contemporary Authors Autobiographical Series, Volume 14