Airscape

One tool; a million outcomes

Airscape is a very large original abstract painting that’s created with a series of interlocking sweeping arcs and loops. It’s a simple concept with a spectacular outcome. In here are a series of blue and green colors fused with a few well chosen metallics like gold and purple.

There’s always a danger that by limiting yourself to one particular tool or technique you get a repetitive and nondescript painting at the end of it. The choice of technique is critical though so my love of window squeegees is bound to manifest itself as often as possible!

And that’s it – one long extending pole, two sizes of blade and my imagination. In fact, you can see this at work as we broadcast the whole painting LIVE in one of my Live Stream events that we do each Wednesday from the studio at Swarez HQ.

Colour and layering choices

Once the tool and techniques are decided the next consideration should be the colours used. The list was short – it had to be a mix of green and blue with few chosen swoops of purple. That was pretty much it! The greens are delicious and feature a watery-oceanic turquoise called Water Blue alongside Piaggio Scooter Green. The blue colors consist of French Blue, Swarez Blue and Boston Metallic Blue.

The painting gets some serious volumes of paint on it during the course of its creation and this is weaved and coerced into some spectacular forms. And the success of these arc and swoosh style of paintings is the interactions that colors have when they cross each other during the layering process.

Getting into the groove

When you get the right flow and things work well there’s a real sense of accomplishment as the forms begin to appear as the canvas fills with paint. Of course, I have my own ways of using a rubber blade and this is most noticeable with the varying sizes of sweeps you can see in the paint. There are both wide and narrow bands and some are dense with paint whilst others contain the merest hints. This is down to the way I deploy the contact area of the blade when it makes contact with the canvas.

It’s a real art form (sorry about the pun!) and has come with practice over the years. However, this is the first time I have used a limited palette of color and I have to say I am elated with it now it’s dry. This definitely is one of my favourites from recent months.