untitled painting in red and indigo under white Painting

A mass of swirling particles, like swarming bees or chemicals and gases colliding in space creating rocks, planets, moons, worlds. Some years ago I began to progressively move away from representational painting into almost a form of surrealist/fantasy painting built around a theme or a very loose story, or some form of subject matter. I became uninterested in the subject I had been focusing on a spent some time thinking what to move on to or what subject I felt a strong connection to that I could create art from or about but I found nothing that I had that spark for. I was still thinking about painting a lot and was looking at more and more abstract work, predominantly by the American painters, Rothko, Still and Newman. I found I was having these kind of blurred half thoughts about paintings but they never really materialized into some kind of complete vision of a figurative form, just blurry allusive tones and shades, I found it all a bit frustrating until I had the eureka moment and thought, ‘yeah, fuck it, paint the blur’. So from 2011 I began painting the blur in my mind, at first it was grounded in elements from my environment, more as a way of looking for the right textures to convey this idea about images coming together in amongst the fog and noise in the mind. Paint something that was clouded, clouded in static like a slightly out of tune analog radio or television signal. By the time I reached the point of making this painting (untitled painting in red and indigo under white) I had completely dispensed of the early ideas and connection to urban decay, paintings about matter breaking down, I was now trying to make something, or grasp a thought in the fog and mold it, build on it. In most cases work is altered throughout the painting process, working through problems or developing tonal and textural qualities that surface unexpectedly during painting that become considered and can push a painting about a bit. So it rarely ends up exactly as it was in thought or as it was sketched (not that I make many sketches anymore). ‘untitled painting in red and indigo under white’ was different in that respect. I had a clear, well as clear as a blur can be, vision of how I wanted this painting to look; it’s color, tonal qualities, fades from one color to the next and texture, and that is what was made exactly as I saw it in my mind. So not so blurry after all, but a clear idea, and with a clear idea how to execute the making process. I had laid down a red and dark indigo in February of 2015. I was not going to rush this work and became side tracked for a while, did other things and then went back to the U.K. to visit family and friends for the summer. I was itching to get on with it when I returned to Taiwan and the rest of the painting happened within a few days, a lot of wet-on-wet layering and not much standing back and thinking on what to do next or contemplating color and tone. I finished stood back and saw what I had spent most of the year thinking of. I was now completely in the world of pure abstraction, an abstract thought leading to the making of an abstract image, no connection to any object, no subject. Drifting out into an expanse of space, empty void, abuzz with the possibility of creation. The painting has been made by placing stretched canvas on the floor. A brush being loaded with paint and then tapped gently above the canvas to give a spray effect; the surface becoming made up of small dots and splashes of paint giving some surface texture; although this is quite minimal as the paint is heavily thinned. Layers of paint are applied one at a time; wet-on-wet or wet-on-dry, and each layer of varying tonal strengths to the last, depending on texture and visual effect desired. Painting is signed, dated and titled on rear. Ready for hanging.

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:51.2 W x 38.2 H x 0.9 D in

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