Tuesday 15 March 2016

RED LINE/BLUE LINE

I have just completed my two biggest canvasses.  They will hopefully be included in Art 16 - London's Global Art Fair from 20 - 22 May at Olympia, where the Anise Gallery will be exhibiting.
They are both 4' x 2'6" (sorry about the outdated imperial measurements, but that's how the canvas came) and are called Red Line and Blue Line.
Here I am in the studio varnishing Blue Line:
I love these final stages of making a painting:  putting my stamp and signature on the back, and using my zinc stencils to title it along the bottom edge, and finally the varnishing.  I use two coats of acrylic gloss varnish, which brings the painting to life, and - in my mind - emphasises the fact that this is an art work on canvas, rather than a piece of distressed industrial metal.  Varnishing has traditionally been a public event ('vernissage') at which the public would be admitted to the studio to watch the artist at work.
These two pieces, which will hopefully stay together, depict a panel of metal, with clearly inscribed orthogonal weld lines.  Across both panels is a line of distress, tracing some unknown damage across the canvas in a graph-like meander.  This line is heavily modelled, as you can see from the detail below:
... and then, in a quick operation (alarmingly quick when compared with the many hours I spent building up the background colour), I pulled a palette knife loaded with contrasting colour across this line, so it caught the high points.
The two canvasses reverse the colour scheme - well, almost:  I had to adjust them slightly, and I'm afraid these photos, taken in natural light, don't do justice to the blue - especially the blue/turquoise tone of Red Line, as you can see here:
I hate to sound over-ambitious, but wouldn't some work like this, maybe 4m wide by 2m high, look great on a blank wall in a gallery?  That would need a new studio.



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