Abstraction I contemplate more often than produce, I find with the passing of time my concepts gradually refine and becomes focused. I believe my best abstracts remain unpainted, or may even be unpaintable, but I folder sketches and notes for the right time, many revisited and revised over a twenty-year plus period.
The transition is often difficult when the time comes to paint these concepts, as, when the idea becomes material, my connection with the process of painting and the theme must remain harmonious.
2014 oil on canvas
The triptych format holds a strong appeal to me with the multiple panel arrangement fulfilling context in storyboard fashion. The 'narrative band' paintings demonstrate a progression in form by observing them progressively like the written page. The series is painted to evoke a narrative development in this manner.
Most of my abstract paintings use a square format. I find this compounds abstraction as it removes the proscenium’s narrative effect, the rectangle with its vertical/portrait or horizontal/landscape staging.
Colours in the final glaze include genuine malachite, ochre and grapevine black; part of the palette historically used for the decoration of classical Greek statuary. The canvas is textured with a genuine white marble gesso mix to give a gestural flow below the paint layers.
Titian is said to have commented about a red robe he painted, he said that “the red was about as good as he could make it but it would really be right in thirty years”. I like this understanding of the progressive effects of time on a work in delivering an ideal state. Likewise, in ‘Centered, counterintuitive adaptation’, (and ‘Nurture, organic’), I have used genuine red carmine, an organic colour which will be in a gradual state of flux as its colourific intensity changes over time. Coherent to the theme, this poetic state of change is a considered aspect of these works. The use of this rare organic colour came through sourcing a small quantity of the genuine pigment and patiently making it into an oil paint.
2014 oil on canvas
In my abstract paintings, historic techniques afford me numerous processes to fulfil the narrative. Using the gestural texture of marble gesso in the foundation layers along with the age-old techniques of under painting below the principle painted surface, then glazing over with transparent veils of pigment applied over the surface. Most or all of these techniques are used in my abstract paintings. They not only maintain a composed control over the composition but also yield their own complimentary aesthetic.
2008 oil on canvas
In this series of paintings, abstraction highlights the principle "no singular correct interpretation". "I composed this series with the concept that materials may possess a whole range of application, for instance with the panel 'Carrara marble', this archetypal material which may be commonplace as functional surface in buildings, was also the marble used by Michelangelo in his iconic sculptures".
1991 acrylic on board
I have sourced some of his earlier works as reference for this site.
Art Sections
[ works 1 - contemporary ] [ works 2 - alternative ] [ works 3 - abstract diverse ]
[ works 4 - portraits ] [ works 5 - the detail ]