Crimson Tide

It’s a waiting game

I’ve wrestled for ages for a suitable name for this red and purple painting. Likewise with the timing of it’s release. It’s been done for quite a while now but for some reason I have hesitated in putting online.

It’s a funny thing really – sometimes you just have to live with it in your own space until it’s the right time to show it. I can’t disassemble that any further but now is definitely the right time.

Splash and drip

The colours are favourites of mine, no doubting that. But rarely do I ever go quite as bold as this. So let’s establish the technique before we go on; it’s a combination of methods but at its heart there’s a top half of purple and a bottom half of red enamel paint. Over this has gone a repeating sequence of dripped and splashed applications of white, black and a couple of shades of blue.

The word ‘splash’ is probably a little inaccurate though as the main white elements are placed with a great degree of accuracy and care – it’s just that I have no real idea how to define the way in which I scoop up the paint on a wooden spoon and crouch down to flick it on to the canvas.

In order to get paint to travel it has to be accelerated otherwise it just stays in one place and moves outwards from a central point. If you want it to cover distance you have to give it some beans (be quite aggressive). And that’s where the dangers arise.

Luck or skill?

I think that entirely depends on your point of view. Let me answer that by saying that it was my intention to create a reasonably contained ‘body’ to the splash applications and then let the excesses move outwards. I certainly didn’t want to cover the whole thing (as I have done in a few previous paintings).

No, this was all about weighting the painting evenly from the centre and letting the rest of it find its own way. So I suppose you could say I am both skillful and lucky at the same time.