Day 6 – Burst
Ah, Burst, the last painting I painted for the show. I always leave the pigments and resins soaking overnight to allow the colours to develop on the canvas. This means the results are unpredictable and sometimes disastrous! But for Burst it seemed to me that everything behaved perfectly. The colours spread exactly where I wanted, the resins soaked in exactly right, and the glaze is glorious. If only practice could make perfect, then I would be assured perfect results in every painting from now on!
http://www.gallery-ten.co.uk
Firstly I want to thank all of the lovely people who came to the launch of my show yesterday. Thanks! You made the evening very wonderful! And also a big thanks to gallery/ten for being such a great venue.
My Chroma Utopia calendar continues today with Gauze 1; chosen as it was the first piece to sell in my show. Gauze 1 extends my experimentation with layering and the creation of depth within a 2D picture. It began life as a sheet of glass onto which I painted, both front and back, using acrylic and a number of different pigments. I then proceeded to pour a variety of clear industrial resins over the surface of the glass, allowing them to mingle and create bubbles and tiny imperfections – hence the slight obscuring of the painted figure and the title of ‘Gauze’.
Day 4 – Fluoresce
Well, my show opens tonight, and I have to say I think it’s the best collection of work that I’ve ever put together :-)
To celebrate this I’ve chosen to show you ‘Fluoresce’ today. It may be my favourite piece in the whole show. Look closely at it and you’ll see the carefully layered surface- fabric, acrylic paint, varnish and then a number of glazes which work around and beneath the portrait below. The coloured glaze is suspended amidst clear resin, playing with our sense of depth perception and obscuring some of what’s beneath but also adding a delicate pattern of cracks and tessellations amidst glorious diffusing colour.
Day 3 – Vermillion
A wonderfully rewarding day today spent with the people from Menter a Busnes and Big Ideas Wales being trained to deliver entrepreneurship workshops to young people in schools and colleges. So inspiring to meet all the other entrepreneurs too… my head is now filled with new and wonderful art schemes!
I received no business help at all when leaving university and deciding to become a self-employed artist so I can’t emphasise enough how important schemes such as this are. I’m ready and willing to pass on my skills, knowledge and enthusiasm, just let me know!
I guess one of the important things I’ve learnt about myself as I have progressed through my art career is that I have an unending supply of ideas and drive to try new things and develop techniques for making art in ways that have never been thought of before. Can an artist be an entrepreneur? Well, yes of course, it’s just a way of thinking! Collaboration with other industries and learning from businesses outside the art world has proved vital to drive my practice forwards into new and unexplored territory.
Here you see my artwork ‘Vermillion’. This sums up perfectly my curiosity and desire to engage with materials in unusual ways. It came about as a result of me ‘playing’ in my studio with fabrics, pigment, acrylic varnish, soluble fabric and rubbery industrial resin. It really proves that you never know what you can make with a material until you experiment, ignore the instructions and use it in an unusual way.
Day 2 – The Green Fuse
Whew, too much work late at night and so another very short post…
The Green Fuse was one of my first (successful) experimental works. It’s made with a combination of various scientific and industrial materials and processes which I have adapted to use in an art context.
Here plant starches and pigments are combined in resin to create gorgeous chromatic glazes. The colours evolve and grow organically through the resin. The whole is then mounted on white acrylic for display.
http://www.gallery-ten.co.uk/#/english/home.html
