Atmosphera

About the painting

Atmosphera is a wonderfully calm yet uplifting new contemporary painting that brings all the elements of my craft together into a single piece of work. At its heart it’s a painting that is created with a few shades of blue (including my infamous Swarez blue) together with hints of metallic gold, a drop of purple, a hint of orange and a dob of black.

The blue is broken up with hints of white and it’s this intricate blending that has helped me to morph the basic blue colors into the dizzying array of tonal shifts you can see in the photos. This is a neat trick I learned many years ago that saves mixing colors before they go onto the canvas. I prefer to do that on the surface of the painting as the results are so much more dynamic and spontaneous.

Exploring blues

Getting those blues to work for me is the biggest challenge in a painting that is dominated by a single color. Sure, you can dump a ton of different shades on but that never quite hits the levels of detail as the method I have outlined already. Taking a base color and then manipulating it with the others that surround it pave the way to a spectacular array of variations on the main theme.

The richness and diversity of the blues is not the only story here though as there are other subtle additions that play a vital supporting role. That honor belongs to metallic gold and purple , with a little grounding work done with black.

The gold appears in a couple of key places that help to break things up but it also pops in when you least expect it through the inclusion of carefully placed seams. These are only visible in certain light conditions but look like they are woven through the canvas at the very heart of its creation. Very cool! I’ve manage to catch a few shimmers in the photos, here and there.

Detailing

Now that we’ve put the colors and tonal blending into context let’s look at the astonishing level of detail that Atmosphera contains. At this point I would definitely suggest you have a scroll through the photos. What staggers me the most (and I never get tired of saying this) is how far into the canvas the details go and how small some of them are.

This is partly down to the way I can manipulate my enamel paints through chemical additions but also down to the way in which I move paint on the canvas (and the tools I use to do it). I still get goosebumps when I do the close up photos of my paintings because I am forever amazed at how involved each one is, both from a sensible viewing distance and from very close in.

Finally, let’s talk textures. Yes, they are there but almost impossible to photograph properly. From top to bottom it’s one of those contemporary artworks that you want to keep touching. Hard to explain but important to recognize nonetheless.