220X180

At the beginning of this new academic year I got started with my most ambitious painting yet. Measuring 220 x 180cm this canvas is the largest I have ever painted. It came into my life as a reject from another student’s abandoned portfolio. I took it under my wing, re-stretched it and over a period of a few months I brought the surface up to standard, along with my other canvases. With the knowledge that the first of a painting this size may not reach a well resolved finish, I banished the idea of it ever coming to any sort of conclusion. It has become a test piece to see whether my current painting technique scales up and if so, what changes as a result?

My plan is to test ideas freely and build this painting up over a period of a few months at least. It will act as a sounding board of ideas for the smaller canvases, space to breath but also hopefully project onto other images in the process. An ever changing, progressive painting, not just one idea brought into being, then finished.

Like my first 30x30cm paintings this term, I started with a thin solution of Raw Umber ad applied it in much the same way as the small works. Scraping fluid paint across the surface.

Working with some inspiration from a gem stone called Labradorite which my partner Dot came across on our summer holiday in Cornwall. I transposed a sense of the colour and texture of the magical stone into painting form.

The next layers posed an added difficulty. The application of colour seemed to be very different from the small counterparts. The large scale mean somewhat that I had to be more deliberate with my actions. I was not expecting such a ‘problem’ to show up quite this early in the process. Will this mean that the large and small paintings will be fundamentally different from one another, I suppose that would be the obvious conclusion but does it have to be this way? I mean to find out – how can I marry up the process of the small scale with the larger image.

My first thought was that I need larger tools to match the huge surface, I have also underestimated the amount of thinners and paint I used for the small pieces. I must be more bold with my usage of ‘disposables’. I have become much more aware of the size of my body in comparison to the painting, most of all – my hands!
Tackling this piece will involve a different physical role. I will have to use my whole body instead of just my arms. This has been surprisingly physically draining.

I decided to reintroduce some light into the painting to prevent it from getting dark and dirty too early. This I did by with a brush and hand in order to get an even surface and also to work off what is there in the image already. For structural reference I extracted from pictures of an acid desert in Ethiopia – The terrain is otherworldly. I am very much looking forward to seeing how the journey of this painting will go and of course where it will end up!