150cm x 150cm (59″ x 59″)
Fire in the Sky is a square abstract painting created with enamel paint. The technique I used to create this painting is a very unusual one which sees a square piece of primed canvas stapled to a square platform and attached to a tilting/rotating base.
It may be a little hard to imagine in words so by all means check out the video below of it being painted live – from start to spectacular finish.
I have used the tilt and rotate table quite a few times now and I always get something different each time, even though the forces acting on the paints are the same. This is one of the reasons I love this technique – its relative unpredictability.
The process involves moving the table from a horizontal position to one that sees gravity acting upon it. The you can add the rotating element to it which pushes paint around the canvas surface whilst it’s being pulled downwards.
I also get my fingers and thumbs involved at various points too – this is a neat trick to push paint into places it hasn’t gone already or to scoop up paint and redeploy it elsewhere.
The result of this manipulation is a painting that’s effortless to live with yet infinitely engaging to look at. Part of that is also down to the colour choice and in this instance I took the idea of fire and sky as the basis to work on. There’s something quite wonderful about the elemental nature of stuff.
No Boundaries
