Bacteria Pot Monsters

This is a large drip painting in pink, purple, black and white enamel paints.

It’s useful to clear up one misconception about drip art – that it’s easy. As anyone who has ever come to paint with me has found out – it’s anything but.

Part of the problem is in making decisions: where to place paint and how, when to add more and where. What consistency, with what tool, how long between applications, what colours, what chemicals to use, what shapes to produce.

Make the wrong decisions at the wrong time and it soon turns to shit (normally turns brown!). The list is endless and so too are the possibilities. ‘Pot Monsters’ is mad for sure, but also balanced, delicate, infinitely engaging and mysteriously beautiful

Looking at the physical aspects of this large drip painting you can see that the edges are respected as the concentration of paint is directed towards the centre.

Arcs and sweeps navigate the edges of the canvas whilst an underpinning of purple holds the strawberry red together. Intricate black gulleys gush violently across everything; scattered and bombarded by all the other colours.

And so to the name? Easy really – it’s tiny components remind me of bacteria, the aggressive, snarling shapes remind me of monsters and the ‘pot’ reference is a way of containing all this energy in one place – the painting itself. So it’s not really complicated when you break it down.

I hope you can get to see this in the flesh one day; it is absolutely insane, and for that reason alone it’s one of my favourites because it sticks two fingers up to convention.

Bacteria Pot Monsters is an original large drip painting; painted in enamel paints onto a flat piece of Belgian canvas then coated three times with primer. When dry he was stretched around a seasoned timber frame made from Dutch hardwoods (via sustainable forestry) with all staples on the reverse.