After some researching I came across an exhibition in St Ives last year that was all about how different artists had imagined the sea over the years. It was called Aquatopia.
I then came across some paintings by an artist called Dee Ferris.
I like her work because it’s really atmospheric and the obscure blurred quality reminds me or murky waters, especially Ideal Homes (this is the beginning of forever) which to me, looks like it could be a coral reef, or more likely seaweed swaying in the water.
I wanted to create a similar effect in my work, and I think I have achieved this by accident, when I am painting with a lot or water and lines and patterns develop, but then when the work is dry they have blurred out and colour fade into one another almost effortlessly.
In my dissertation I was exploring the roles of control and chance in the process of painting. I always thought that chance was very prominent in my work, in the way I let ink/paint run and mix together, letting the medium take control. And when I add water to the canvas, the water takes control of the paint. Methods like this are evident in my work where I have added ink to wet paper, allowing the ink to bleed out or in my Crown Pools project where I pressed two canvases together with the medium in between, so I couldn’t see what I was doing.
But actually,
if I actually stop and think about it, I have a awful lot of control over the painting.
I have control over,
where I spray/ pour the water
what colours I use and where I put them
(if adding ink) what direction I encourage it to go in by tilting it
Now that I am aware of this, I could experiment with having more control over the canvas, or less, or both and then compare the differences. So how would I do that? If I wanted to lose more control, perhaps I could really emphasize the role of water in the painting, immerse it in water, run it under a tap or put it in the rain, or throw it on from a distance. But the hardest thing to do would be to leave it, and not make any changes.
Or, if I wanted to control it further, this could involve giving the mediums precise directions and patterns to follow and using a paintbrush more often, but then this would create more linear results which won’t be as visually pleasing.
Alternatively, I could just acknowledge the fact that I have a large amount of control over the canvas, and just carry on experimenting. Since my work now is more about creating a sense of depth and mystery, than about the amount of control/chance in the process.
Keith Tyson uses processes and systems in his work as a way of understanding how the universe works and how we came into being.
I have always adored Keith Tyson’s paintings, especially his series of Nature Paintings. They are stunning and have beautiful lines and shapes that develop apparently by themselves with no intervention from the artist. He poured different paints and chemicals on to hot aluminium and allowed them flow, then it was set in a halfway state. He said he was letting nature make the painting and he was trying to lose as much control as possible.
Some of Tyson’s Nature Paintings were named after the force that created them, like air, fire, earth and water. In my work I really want to use water a lot more and make it almost a main material that I use. This will allow me to lose some control and also emphasize the mysterious power of water.
I have seen Deep impact in person at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in 2011, and noticed the glossy sheen, due to the aluminium surface, which you can’t see in a photograph or online, which is something I like in my work. Sometimes I spritz a dry painting with water and it often looks better wet than dry, which is one of the reason why i like to give my paintings some kind of varnish like PVA as it gives it a glossy finish as well as protecting the many layers.
I started a painting back in October. It’s about 1m x 1 ½ m. So it’s one of the biggest paintings I’ve ever done. I decided that it was going to have many layers, that I would build up over time, at its current state it already has about 5-6 layers. The mediums that I have been using on this work are acrylic (watered down), inks, glitter and a lot of water.
A problem that has been raised when working on this painting is that due to the amount of water that I’m putting on the canvas, it becomes weighed down slightly which causes paint etc. to all flow in one direction, ending up in a puddle in the middle. Although this creates a good density of colour in the middle it leaves the edges a bit weak and you are able to still see the canvas in some areas.
So for now there’s not much I can do but persevere with applying paint to the edges only to try and build up the same quality of depth as the middle. But in future works, maybe I need to think about not making the canvas as wet, or working on flat canvas (unframed) on the floor, allowing the paint to gain more freedom.
Overall I’m really happy with how it looks at the moment. I wanted the amount of layers I have put on the canvas to create a sense of depth and I feel I have achieved that. The dark colours create an intense mystery and an almost eerie quality. I like that it reminds me of both the sea and space, both are places that we don’t fully understand.
And bear in mind, it’s not finished yet…
