Colours and technique
This is an abstract painting created with a mainly orange and green palette of colours. It’s something a little different from the normal kind of things I create (if you can ever call what I do normal!).
The background is a single white mass that provides the perfect base to create those magnificent forms over the top. Getting a mix that can be applied in just a couple of goes is a tense affair – it’s important to get the ratios right and even more so to apply the paint in the right places.
That, then, is the technique. Lots of paint poured into a baking dish then poured out over the fresh white surface. Once the main layer has been applied it’s time to start adding the highlights and details.
And that’s where the really tricky work begins.
Getting things right
It’s very easy to overwork a painting like this. Whether it’s working out the volume of paint to use or the ratios of colour, or perhaps what to put where and how to layer each additional application, the task of considering these aspects is an arduous one.
A lot of the time I am led by an instinctive feeling about what feels right and what doesn’t. It’s an odd phrase to use as I find it difficult to add anything tangible by way of an explanation. But, odd though it may sound, I seem to know when something is right or wrong.
The result of all these decisions and considerations is a quite remarkable painting. There are so many wins in this for me but it’s perhaps the depth and variety of the green and orange paint strokes that really captivate. These make up the backbone of the painting in my eyes – irrespective of the overall shape and flow of the piece.