‘Sink painting’
A small experimental painting, spending most of its time in the sink. I mix up some paint with water pour it over the canvas (when it is in the sink), then I run the tap over it and allow the water to rinse off areas and push the paint in different directions. Then I let it dry and do it again!
I also did the same thing with the third (and current) layer, but with black ink, which end up running off the canvas completely.
I feel that experimenting like this makes me more confident to use the same or a similar process on a bigger canvas,
though it might not fit in the sink…
‘Purple painting’
This is another A2 sized painting I have started. Again it has quite a few layers already. Though almost all of them have occurred at the sink with the help of a running tap, this canvas has also been tilted when some layers where painted so you can see the paint has been encouraged to flow in the same direction and is quite linear, which isn’t as appealing as the ones that have laid flat throughout the process.
Though what’s nice about this work, is when I painted the base coat I used a brush and built up a fine texture, which each layer of watery paint has emphasized as it traps itself around the patterns.
Lilac Sediment,
is the current name (as it might change as more layers develop) of this painting, about A2 in size. It currently has four layers. I have painted it on the floor and at the sink, using lots of water, paint, ink and glitter.
The most recent layer completely surprised me, I mix paint with water as usual, but this time a pearlescent paint. When travelling across the canvas, the pigment and water moved along whilst leaving this whitish sediment behind them, a trail of beautiful texture. It seems the water separated some of the elements in the paint somehow, the process was wonderful to watch and I will definitely be using this technique again.
At one point in the process the painting developed beautiful lines where the paint was mixing with the ink from the previous layer. I filmed this happening in a very short video as it dripped off the canvas into the sink.
Though, when it had dried, the lines had disappeared into a blur. Although it still looked equally as good, if I hadn’t of filmed or taken photographs of it in a wet state, no one else would have known these lines existed. This then throws up questions about what is the actual art work? The wet state, or the dry state? This is obviously something I’m going to have to think about in more detail, it seems photography/videoing may have a larger role in my work than I first thought.
A while ago I came across the artist India Dewar whilst searching for Keith Tyson images, and I came across an article about her which explained that she is also inspired by Tyson herself.
She is also inspired by science, she uses a combination of physics and pattern as a way of understanding the world. Her work is beautiful and fluid, and as you may have already noticed, blue. She, like me, thinks that blue is a very symbolic colour and is obsessed with it herself.
She also uses circles, which is something I want to do more of as a circular canvas completely changes the overall feel and presence of the finished painting. I need to get my hands on some more circle canvases for my degree project…
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.
