THE SELF-ISOLATION RESIDENCY 26TH AUGUST 2020: DAY 150

Near Black Series, 'Near Black Wash', work in progress,
oil & Resin on canvas, 30.5 x 152.5 cm.

Over the last couple of weeks I've been trying out some new ideas and experiments for paintings in the 'Near Black Series'. Most of the pieces which I am currently working on are quite small, but are quite labour intensive, they require multiple layers of thick impasto oil painting and resin which takes a long time to dry between layers. As I played with these pieces I began to think about how the colour palette I've created might work with thinner paints over a larger surface area, how areas of transparency and translucency would change how the colours work in relationship to the thick impastos which I normally use.

One of the things that struck me about working in this new way was that I would have to increase the scale of my paintings to allow for the greater variety of techniques, but I still wanted the 'scale and form' of the paintings to be a dominant feature of their nature. I have for quite some time been thinking about creating paintings which have an anthropomorphic nature to them; paintings that still have a relationship to landscape and to the spatiality of the void, but that also have a relationship to the human form. I have therefore created some new stretchers, because of the size of these pieces I have returned to stretched canvas for them to reduce the weight, which are tall and slim to mimic or at least be reminiscent of the human form.

So far the project is in its infancy, but already I feel that there are definitely elements of the paintings that are beginning to work. This anthropomorphic form appears to be a real success, the paintings are of a form and scale where they can be hung onto a wall or they can even be lent against the wall to give them a human-like presence and relationship. The washed out 'Near Black is also proving to be interesting; in the areas where it is wash-like the true 'purplely' nature of the paint is revealed as opposed to its near black form which is still exhibited in the impasto areas.

As I have said, these are very much experiments and works in progress, so I will be interested in their development, and I will also be interested in peoples reactions to them.