Canvas D

This one has been on the go for a few weeks now. It's undergone a fair amount of change since it last appeared here and yet I am still uncertain of it. Somehoe it has become more of an assemblage than a painting. Is this what I want to do? Don't I want to actually use a brush on occasion? I think I may wish to.

The main relevant question here, though, is is this finished? Don't answer that, because I'm not going to. At best, I may call it 'almost ready' or something similar. None of that talk of being finished, thank you very much.

Space is the place

In a week dominated by words, there has been little time for painting. And much of the time that there was was taken up with something of a misadventure, which is going to reming hidden for the time being, until it reaches even slightly something that I'm remotely happy with.

This piece was started mid week, listening to a steady diet of Sun Ra. It is a start, no more, and will be changing a lot in the coming weeks.

Esto también pasará - revised

I should probably have held off until today to post this one. As it was, the changes I had planned to make to this when I last posted it were all that it needed. This one (whisper it) might even be finished.

More (almost) newness

I've updated my site today. There were a few paintings that I had not got around to shooting, which I wanted to add. These date from mid-winter and were made when I wasn't quite certain where I was going and so instead reworked some existing pieces, whilst I mulled over ideas.

I've also added most of the on-going pieces that have been shown here over previous weeks. All of these can be seen in lovely big, zoomify-sized images.

A world of new

New versions abound today. First up are the new versions of canvases A, B and C. These have been on-going for a few weeks now and I think may finally be nearing an end stage.

Canvas A has had minimal changes from the last time. I've added some drawing and a portion of a photo, no more. I don't think this one is likely to change again.

Canvas B, however, is quite a bit different from last time. Here there are more washes of colour, as well as some very obvious splattering, which does indeed have a slight unwelcome pink tint (note to self: always be sure and clean your implements). There are also two different layers of drawing, much of which I have now obscured, and a poem. Yes. A poem. It may be a touch pretentious. Deal with it.

Canvas C is the most changed. I was quite unhappy with this in its last guise and have therefore greatly reworked it: new plaster layering, a white wash, re-tinting the letters, orange splahes and a stamp. (I like stamps.) Lastly I added a little drawing. I'm still not certain how I feel about this one but time will tell. I've put it on the wall, along with the others, to consider over the coming weeks.

Esto también pasará

This one has been hacked about quite a lot in the past few days. I've already covered over quite a lot of what I first did to it and I expect more of that is going to happen yet.

You will not die, it's not poison

I've got a lot of ideas swimming about in my head at the moment. Adding typography to my paintings is one of them, the idea being to add order to what is otherwise chaos.

My liking for type comes from my work as a magazine designer and for me that absolutely represents my ordered side. I enjoy it greatly and trying to find ways to bring that into my painting is a challenge. So far, I've been sticking to painting simple large letters. Here I've gone for a different approach entirely. I'm really pretty happy with how this has turned out, although ideally the paper would be thinnner.

There are a few other things here worth mentioning. The first is an addition of a photo, which I attempted to merge into the painting. I'm not too happy with how this particular instance turned out and so have covered a lot of it up with the type.

Secondly, there are the wires that are strung between carpet tacks, hammered into the outsides of the stretcher frame. I like how this looks and will almost certainly try it again. Hopefully I can get them to rust as well next time, although that may well might require using chemistry, which will almost certainly hurt my head.