Art From London Markets, a-n feature

Alone in a wine dark sea WIP
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traditional pigments and oil painting media, hand mixed
Having spent the largest share of last year working in indigo with all its rich potential for tone and its heavily laden role within the history of trade, towards the end of the year around November time I started working with other traditional pigments.

Lost girl: Thames WIP
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traditional pigments and oil painting media, hand mixed

Through out the year the process of working with pigments and mixing them with oil media myself has made me much more directly conscious of paint as an amalgam of particles. In the indigo pictures I was interested in creating the sensation that you feel when you walk out into a dark night and at first all you can see is blankness, a flatness, but with time you become able to be immersed in the darkness and reach a sense of depth, your own insignificance in the vastness of the night.
Handling the pigment in powder form, and the care it requires, has brought to the front of my mind the way in which tonal values are manipulated by the density of these tiny particles: The concentration within any globule of paint: The way memory is dependent on layered pathways in the brain. The way disease can erode this density. The introduction of a wider palette has created different challenges for creating resonant images full of space, but is more malleable in terms of exploring the complexity of memory and identity.

And as I create these soft images, hazy and unfocussed abstractions, like the light in many a day this winter, building up surfaces where the interplay between the feeling of created space with the flat surface on which it is created is a more conscious act than ever before, and therefore the surfaces are truly more sheer, and yet the feeling of depth is still achieved I am seduced.

I am looking forward to showing works from my indigo series, and beginning to create a catalogue to illustrate a wider range of my work and take full advantage of the Talented Art Fair in March.
for tickets go to: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/talented-art-fair-2017-tickets-30949165788