the Self-Isolation Residency 17th July 2020: Day 110

New Painting, "First grey near black", oil & resin on  plywood block.

"First Grey Near Black" is the second new painting in the 'Near Black series' painted on plywood block. This branch of the series successfully fuses my expressions of painting and art with my research into colour theory and the objecthood of a painting whilst also referencing my love of landscape as an expanded field.

This is a two stage painting which began life as a very similar painting to "Near Black Mirror"; elements of the Near Black layers are still visible through the 'breaks' in the upper layers of paint. Subsequent depths of a new colour, 'First Grey', were built up on top of the 'Near Black' to produce a semi-hazy grey void which has the depth of a land or skyscape. 'First Grey' is my second new 'colour' developed as part of this project, like Near Black, First Grey is a colour which I have created through colour experiments within my 'Zornist' style palette. It is a grey mixed entirely without black, obviously, or white. Once my Near Black is mixed, remembering that it is in actuality a very dark purple, small amounts of Yellow Ochre are added to the mix until a grey is achieved that is as pure as possible, devoid of all traces of the red, blue or yellow.

This is of course the 'first' and technically, the only grey that can be mixed in this way without the addition of white or black, hence the name First Grey. Other greys may also be possible by varying the 3 original 'primary' sources and as the project progresses so will research into this field.