Echo Beach

A little about the color choices

Echo Beach is a spectacular leap into the world of color as I celebrate the sheer pleasure of moving paint around in typical Swarez style! The painting is a combination of 14 colors morphed and coerced into some beautiful shapes simply by moving a paint brush around (well, around 15 of them to be precise), but you get the idea.

The only major paint group missing is green and that was entirely deliberate as I just didn’t want green on this particular piece. instead this has a definite orange and blue feel to it with all the other colours playing a strong supporting role. I find the color scheme utterly compelling and I find myself staring at it way more than I thought I would. I am still trying to work out why that is.

Interestingly it’s the orange in the centre that caused me the most consternation as I felt I needed to add to it. As you can see I did by using a single curl of black to break it up. I’m very glad I did as it makes a nice feature right in the center.

Relax, I caught everything on film!

Yes, that’s right, the entire creation of this painting was recorded on one of my live stream broadcasts (see the YouTube link below) and you can relive that to put everything into context. Every decision, every brush stroke and the full commentary of me creating this beautiful abstract has been captured.

I was definitely in my own little world as you can probably tell when you watch it and that’s no bad thing. We should all have that place we can retreat to when we can.

The finish

A mixture of gloss and semi-gloss enamel paints mean that here are a lot of textural changes. As you move around it so the light catches different angles and nuances – I can’t show that in photos but I assure you it adds something more to an already full-on work of art.

You can also touch these too and feel the way the paint changes shape and direction – and that is not just confined to a few areas of the canvas, it’s everywhere! Large and small details abound as you first move one way then another. And the closer you get into the paint strokes the more details you see. So this is a contemporary painting that delivers from every viewing angle.

It’s perfectly happy hanging in portrait orientation so, if you have a large double height space that’s crying out for something to fill it, this could be for you. Equally it can also hang in landscape orientation; making the perfect companion to a dining room or open plan living space.