Working in the studio

Today I had the luxury of a full day working in the textile print/dye lab workshop. It was brilliant to have such a lot of space to spread out. I could surround myself with the recent works on paper, digital drawings and photographs, this helped as a reference for colour and a prompt for shapes and marks. As you can see I got immersed in more ways than one !!

I decided I had to tackle the large canvas I started then abandoned a few months ago. I was not enjoying the process of working on a large-scale and was unhappy with the results. I did not want to give up on this and the painting had been in the back of my mind for some time.

I imagined that I would use only the stain painting technique but I have been exploring acrylics recently in my smaller exploratory pieces. This encouraged me to apply white acrylic as a staring point. Changing the orientation from portrait to landscape also  helped me to reconsider the composition and as  I worked things gradually began to fall into place.

I really love direct contact with and the feel of the wet media. The hands seem the most instinctive tools to use and it was a pleasurable experience to merge and spread the dye and paint around.

Here are the final results, although the paint is still wet so I will reassess the results when dry tomorrow. This was a very physical process and I was exhausted afterwards, I don’t think I could tackle anything much bigger than this. I enjoyed the gradual build up of the painting, making compositional decisions, considering the next move and being spontaneous.

I can see a real development from the work I did on location over the summer. I find the abstraction challenging and satisfying as finished works expressing an energy an direct emotion.

I also began work on a silk piece, but this is in very early stages.

I wish every day could be like this………