Iridescent Sweep

What is this?

Iridescent Sweep is a large abstract painting created with a wealth of diverse colours and muted tones. These are combined with the use of gentle arcs and radial movements that span the width and breadth of the canvas.

The ability to move and coerce paint using these long sweeping applications has resulted in some beautiful, and subtle, paint blending – some of which you can see in the close-up photographs.

In many of my multi-coloured abstracts I tend to use the power of colour to form the strength of the shapes but in this one I have opted for a much softer palette. I don’t normally do this but I was keen to find out if I could tone things down a little without losing any impact. The result is a great success!

Balancing colour

Normally, if you’re planning on creating something large and as full of diverse colours then inevitably, you’ll have certain areas that dominate over others. So, part of the challenge in this painting, was to make everything equal. At no point did I want any one colour to dominate or overpower – and that’s proved to be quite the headache when you’re dealing with ten colours all greedy for the spotlight!

But some practice and persistence has paid off an I couldn’t be happier with what came out. Now, the largest sweep is the orange (if you measure by size and paint volume) but this never forces itself on you or does anything other than pull the rest of the colours together.

I have been very careful on the way they are all balanced together so that they all work, not fight, with each other. That care means I can be both bold and restrained and yet achieve something full of drama and life that’s never aggressive or overpowering.