I’m on the move! With all the work for the final 2021 exhibition organised I started a new group of paintings …. the “On My Marks” series!
The above is a tiny section of a mark making and collage exercise. It appealed to me immediately. I like the shapes and the flow of the lines. Now that I look closer, I can see a sneaky “s” hiding in there. It’s basically a curvy design with a hint of diagonals. That texture is nice too. The crop won’t be translated visibly into the new work, it’s a starting point, an inspiration!
The palette of colours I’m using is one I’ve been playing with for a while. Pthalo blue and raw umber yellowish with black and white. I’ve added cadmium yellow light to the mix. It’s providing some brightness and a little touch of playfulness.
I started with eight small squares taped together. To begin, I made some intuitive marks using leftover paint from exploring the colour mixes. Then, some drawing with water soluble graphite and water flicked about to create a few drips.
Standing back to look at them, I felt they needed a bit more warm colour. So I added more marks with a raw umber yellowish mix, did a spot of drawing with a coloured pencil, made some more drips and lifted off things here and there. Then, I left them alone to “cook” for a while. We’ll see what I feel like after that.
It can be difficult not to plough ahead with things, but sometimes I get to a point where I know I’m just continuing for the sake of it, not because I have a useful contribution to make.
Here are two of the squares. I’m more interested in the bottom one than the top one. There’s still a way to go though, so don’t panic!
What to do next? I had a look and decided to do whatever came to mind, or hand! I started with a bit of collage, then felt I needed to lighten them up with “sky” areas. I was led by each image as I worked. (If they are leading me I don’t have to take responsibility do I?)
Sometimes you don’t know whether what you want to do is right or not. No, that’s all the time really I think! It means that you do things and immediately regret them. I often wonder why I keep taking things further when I liked what I had at the start. People often say that you build up a history by creating layers. I think that’s true and I have done that successfully, but I’m not convinced it’s the only way to work.
The four images below are the two paintings I picked out to show you earlier. I’ve done more to them now. The first one has been turned upside down! They’re still not done.
The others are coming along too, but there’s more to do. Either more to do or more to learn! Painting is a learning experiece as well as a creative one. There’s always more to learn, especially from the “duds”.
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Wendy Galloway Art 