THE SELF-ISOLATION RESIDENCY 8th September 2020: DAY 162

New Painting, "White from the depths Near Black", oil & resin
on plywood block, 150 x 150 x 36mm.

"White from the depths Near Black" is the latest new painting in the 'Near Black series' painted on plywood blocks. 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 continuing to reference my love of landscape as an expanded field.

So I've spent quite a lot of time with this painting on the easel over the last couple of days. The first thing that I decided about it was that the actual painting process was completed, that came as no great surprise to me, I had been fairly sure about that facet of the problem all along. What was the problem, as I really had been aware was how to title the piece in such a way so as to both relate it to my ongoing project but also to describe, or 'talk' about, the painting as an individual. I knew that a big part of the title had to relate to the colour palette, hence the working title 'palette', but I also wanted something that spoke about the layers of paint and not just their hues. as I looked at and thought about the piece I realised that it was the 'depth' of layers that made this painting both work on it's own right but that also differentiated it from 'White Water'. I liked the fact that the idea of depth obviously could once again be thought of referring to water but that it also referenced the illusionary space of the the painted depth.

Once all of these ideas had come together in my mind it was a simple matter of playing with the order of the words to arrive at the rather pleasing "White from the depths Near Black".