Green Field
2012
22" x 44"
Sometimes I just want to paint. I don't want to get into convoluted details, pre-planning, design patterns and colour schemes. I just want to throw some paint down and have some fun with it, case in point.
I was going through the November issue of ARTnews when I came across an ad for Wally Findlay Galleries and a show they were putting on for Leonard Nelson, a somewhat obscure colour field painter of the New York Abstract Expressionists. The painting in the ad stopped me in my tracks. Everything about it I loved; it's pointillism, abstract and it's all about colour. I decided right there and then to emulate his work on my next project.
The first thing I did was lay down a layer of green over the entire painting. However, turned out the paint I used was too diluted (watery) and instead of creating nice spots of solid, dense colour which is what I was looking for, it just collapsed into a huge puddle which proceeded to dry up into big washed out blotches of faint green. Normally this would result in a good scrubbing with the help of my good friend, Methyl Hydrate.
Sometimes the painting speaks back, and this time it was saying; "Not bad...not bad at all". All pretentions of following Leonard now out the window, I just pushed on, not really caring anymore how this was going to end until it did.
I was going through the November issue of ARTnews when I came across an ad for Wally Findlay Galleries and a show they were putting on for Leonard Nelson, a somewhat obscure colour field painter of the New York Abstract Expressionists. The painting in the ad stopped me in my tracks. Everything about it I loved; it's pointillism, abstract and it's all about colour. I decided right there and then to emulate his work on my next project.
The first thing I did was lay down a layer of green over the entire painting. However, turned out the paint I used was too diluted (watery) and instead of creating nice spots of solid, dense colour which is what I was looking for, it just collapsed into a huge puddle which proceeded to dry up into big washed out blotches of faint green. Normally this would result in a good scrubbing with the help of my good friend, Methyl Hydrate.
Sometimes the painting speaks back, and this time it was saying; "Not bad...not bad at all". All pretentions of following Leonard now out the window, I just pushed on, not really caring anymore how this was going to end until it did.