Simple outward shapes reveal a more complex and involving structure.
There’s no way photos can do this painting justice. I’m right at the limits of my paints with this one; read on dear viewer…
Let’s be honest here – the simpler a painting looks the harder it is to paint. This one is no exception. Firstly there’s the graded background layer which is composed of five colours in three sessions. Very subtly blended and a work of art in its own right.
Then we come to the foreground applications. Part of the compositional shape in my head was to create a series of delineated figures in close proximity to each other in order to suggest movement. The close relationship of these figures (if you can call them that) is the cornerstone of what defines the painting.
Each is built up using a fast-cure layering technique I have developed which allows repeated layers of thin volumes of paint to be applied in quick succession. The outermost one is the crucial one as it dictates the relationship to the next and so on. There are so many twists and turns to this artwork that you can begin to see why it’s taken four months to paint.
Each delineated figure is cross-sectioned with a complex array of networked shapes and correlated colour shifts; each of these is designed to strengthen the overall shape of the paint – suggesting a distinctive left to right dance across the face of the canvas. In addition to that I also created a slight disintegration of the figures as you move out from the centre, a deliberate tactic to dissolve the strength of them and let the negative space around them breathe a little.
Four orange shades, three black, concrete mushroom, two silvers and two creams were used to create this piece. As the light hits it you can clearly see the textures and reflective surfaces. How ironic that a conversation piece like this is called ‘A Little Less Conversation’… Yeah OK, so it was planned… you got me!
