Saatchi Gallery Visit Cont.
The layering process that she uses to create her paintings gives a creates a sense of depth and perspective. The paint looks as if it were blasted onto the canvas. Created with layers of oil and glittery mica, and marked with scrapes and networks of drips, the works mimic portraiture: A large, indistinct mass of colour occupies their centres- and they are all titled “Portrait” or “Profile.”
I would be very intrigued to see how she produced her paintings and what methods she uses to produce such a variety of patterns. I have always painted more than one layer in my paintings but have not attempted to create space using more than one technique. For example it looks as if she has applied a more transparent layer over the top of her original under paintings that has been left to drip down the canvas of its own accord, in the process creating transparent map-like organisation of colours and lines. This gives her paintings a feeling of depth and intricacy, that is kind of apparent in my painting- but arrived at in a different way.
Looking at Untitled 11, for example, the majority of depth or space in my paintings comes from my use of illusionistic lines and shapes combined with contrasting, or tonally varied, colours. If I were to add an addition layer of semi- transparent paint, one of two things could happen:
One, it gives my painting an extra complexity and dimension that wasn’t there before- resulting in a stronger rendering of space
Or two, it over complicates the composition and my original objective would be lost.
