Monday 27 January 2014

The humming. Yellow, Red and Grey painting Jan 2014 Mixed media on canvas, 80 cm x 100 cm

There is a dead-pan quality to colour fields that come close to notes in music. Variations of intensity, tone and volume all has to be chosen when working the surface. The lure is as always to put too much into the composition. Here I wanted to get to a point of balance where the output from the canvas was a just enough to create activity, but still sparse enough to stay solid.

Saturday 25 January 2014

Neutrality and Narrative. White and Buff White Painting, Jan 2014 Acrylics on canvas 46 cm x 61 cm

In a dark room it takes a little while for the eyes to adjust themselves to the surroundings. Once we start to discern shapes and spaces we realize how different everything looks in the dark. We might even be in a familiar room, yet what we see has an unfamiliar character to it. Colour has all but disappeared, shapes are vague at best. The longer we look the more we make out, though. Our eyes adjust. Images, shapes and spaces slowly appear. The more I consider abstraction within a narrow band of shapes, the more can I seem to find different narratives where there previously appeared to be none. The excitement of walking past a brick wall, or a metal door is a new discovery. In this painting, again an old work became the ground for a combination of neutral colours, normal white and buff white.

Tuesday 14 January 2014

The cutting of space. Blue and White Composition, Jan 2014. Acrylics on canvas, 40.5cm x 50.7cm

Some of the work that doesn't quite make it in my eyes often create a perfect ground for new work. I have spoken about this earlier on my blog, and there is a particular satisfaction in "burying" a painting and see a brand new one "grow" from its shallow grave. Life and death in a never ending ring-dance through time. We start new projects all the time, but we can never quite escape our past. We might as well make it work for us. I had thought a lot about blue, different combinations of blue and decided to use it with white, which is a colour I use a lot. I set to work on texture and the cutting of space, working with the proportions of the areas to achieve the balance I was looking for. The slow build-up of layers by the help of the metal scraper is how I work in the majority of cases, and on top of old textures the results can never quite be predicted. For enquiries about this work, please contact Panzer Trotman Fine Art Gallery on www.ptfineart.co.uk

Opposition, Harmony and the Void. Abstract Painting, Jan 2014 Acrylics on canvas, 50cm x 50cm

To put universal conditions down as simply as possible has always interested me. To paint "conditions" felt like a challenge, and I wanted to make a statement that could serve three purposes. Firstly it was to address general conditions of life, existence and everything, to paraphrase Douglas Adams. Secondly it needed to be simple and thirdly it should be "quiet" enough to allow multiple interpretations. This painting relies less on texture, it's one of my more stringently executed works. Hesitation need not apply.
We pursue everything surrounded by the void. We might oppose something, or somebody. We might be involved in struggle. We might chase a goal. We might have a balanced and fruitful relationship with something or someone, and this always exists in relation to the void, whatever the void might mean. The void can equally mean time itself. Both the past and the future can be seen as a void. Life, death, activity, passivity, individuality and community with others is all played out in the present, in the midst of the void. The void itself, like the blank canvas, creates the singularly most important condition for anything. As I have an interest in science, I wanted the painting to be a homage to earthly, non-lyrical considerations, such as the periodic table or perhaps diagrams of molecular compositions as well as all of the above. A little about a lot.