Acrylic painting

Operan II

Uncategorized
Operan II

A wave, although this looks rather abstract as a result of my scrunching of the canvas. Same technique as the previous two, very diluted acrylic paint applied wet on wet in many layers. I was lucky in that I could use the fantastic space of Brevens Hjärta (https://www.facebook.com/www.brevenshjarta.se/) and be able to move the comparatively large canvas around on the floor in order to force the paint to run and settle where I wanted it to. The building is old with an uneven floor so tilting the canvas just so was acheived by inserting brushes of various sizes under the board onto which the canvas was stapled. I found that the paint separated into layers of pigment so coming back in the morning to inspect the result of the drying process was exciting!

Operan III

Uncategorized
  • Operan III

The first Operan is about 120×100 cm and as I was enjoing working on this large scale I did a couple more and found another photograph from the Stockholm archipelago that inspired me. Looking at this image it is almost too colourful – but I have not made any ‘improvements’ – it is the way light is falling on the microscopic pigment particles and the way they are reflecting the light that make it so vibrant. Photographing this using my phone was a challenge – either the light was bouncing off the surface or, as here, the colours look exaggerated and fake.

Fluid I

Uncategorized

So moving on from Wave, which was painted on a loose piece of canvas, this smaller work is on a stretched frame. Working by manipulating very runny acrylic paint and letting it dry between the application of different hues, I placed the stretcher on the floor by a window and, with the sun shining through, noticed that the mullions cast a lovely shadow which added depth to the painting. I quickly grabbed a brush and thinned Payne’s Grey and captured the shadow. Several layers later this is the end result.

Operan

Uncategorized
Operan (120 x 100 cm)

The inspiration for this work was a photo of a storm cloud hovering over the archipelago outside Stockholm. However, as the work progressed the cloud turned into water and I decided to heighten the ‘wateriness’ with each layer of acrylic paint. This was done by adding very diluted paint and tilting the canvas to steer the colour over the surface.