THE SELF-ISOLATION RESIDENCY 27TH JULY 2021: DAY 485

On my easel No 36, working title: 'Perturbations II:
Casting Shadows Within the Void.' Personal Topography Series,
​oil painting by subtraction, 407 x 610 mm

'On my easel' is a series of posts that I am adding to the Self-Isolation Residency Blog which will consider a current painting which is within days or sometimes hours of completion. This isn't quite the same as 'work in progress' as many of the pieces under consideration in this category may actually be complete already. These are generally going to be works which I am reflecting on for one reason or another and it is these needs for reflection which are preventing me from 'accepting' the work as complete.'

'Perturbations II' working title.

I'm sure I've said this before but I really feel like I'm starting to get somewhere significant with my work. I nearly said my 'new' work but as it's all really part of the same process I'm not sure it's so much new as ongoing.

"Painting by Subtraction."

I say painting but in many ways this process feels like drawing as large parts of the image are formed by allowing the (back)ground colour to not only be visible but significantly so. It's a technique which has evolved over the course of 'The Self  Isolation  Residency', although in many ways it can be argued that it owes its origins to when I first started painting on to a 'black' ground rather than a white one. it also owes a serious 'nod' to the principles of traditional watercolour painting where the white of the paper creates the 'light ' of the image as I do the darkness here.