Painted over one of the wood stain paintings.
Looking at it in context with the rest of my recent work, there seems to be a dialogue developing between them and a series starting to form.
Part of what I’m enjoying at the moment is the idea of covering up. Further to my reflection in the previous post I have been thinking about this in the application of these recent works and there is a strong correlation. There is almost always a painting once considered finished underneath all of these works. They have been painted over. Sometimes completely, sometimes enough to drastically alter.
Another element of enjoyment at the moment is in the materials I’ve been using. I have been using white emulsion, oil pastels, watercolours with various bits of other things that happen to be lying around such as wood stain or pencil crayons. The white emulsion provides a plastic and sharp effect on canvas, especially when used along more traditional artist materials. It reminds me a little bit of when an image gets too much sharpness or contrast applied on photoshop, but for some reason you kind of like it. The emulsion is pretty much pushed to its limit on these canvasses by working, re-working, rubbing, scraping and laying over pastels and watercolours. The oil pastel initially gets applied before the emulsion has the chance to dry, creating a battle, a conflict which causes challenges when negotiating edges, borders and boundaries. There are definite borders and boundaries in these works, areas of space but a lot of the time there seems to be no depth of field at all. There are contradictions to contend with for me in these works.
