A pink and gold abstract painting with black and silver accents
120cm x 95cm (47″ x 37″)
120cm x 95cm (47″ x 37″)
I may not have much pink in my home but I love to use it as a colour to paint with. I use all kinds of pink – from Telemagenta to light dusky Pantone shades and all stages in between. It reminds me of human skin, love, warmth, my mother, happiness, flowers, new born babies, sea anemones, unicorns and pigs.
And if that little lot isn’t doing it for you then maybe the additions of black and gold will help shape it into a different set of emotions for you.
In this abstract painting I’ve used a fair old chunk of pink (it’s a Pantone colour I had made for me) and this is enveloped by a range of colours that help calm down the sheer exuberance of it.
Mixing light and dark is essential in a painting as it helps you define one colour from the net, or one tonal shift from the next. These are at their most powerful when the opposites are extreme.
In this instance the power of pink is entirely supported by black but is also contained by it. The darker tones are perhaps the most important part – even if they’re not he ones that are most obvious.
I have created all kinds of wonderful and engaging shapes in the painting. There are ridges and valleys, rivers and flow and with that sensational metallic gold I also have a shimmering metallic element in there too. There are twists and turns, sharp points and soft points and a thousand tiny details to behold (see the close up shots for proof!).
Having established that this pink and gold abstract painting is packed full of details it’s worth noting how the overall shapes and balance affect the painting and (potentially) a space it may hang in.
I have tried to make this work from all distances and view points, no matter which orientation you hang it in. From afar it’s a single mass of energy and delight that moves graciously back and forth; up-close it’s a thousand tiny paintings in one.
Boundaries always have to be respected though so with such a powerful and strong palette of colours I chose to leave plenty of white space for everything to breathe. You definitely can have too much of a good thing!
The shapes are big enough to entice and provoke but not too overpowering as to command and dominate. The colours are bold but contained. Balance is a fine line between success and failure. Tread carefully…
I am often asked what something is supposed to be. In some paintings there are real influences from the world around me that get abstracted out onto canvas. In other instances there isn’t any reference to anything – they are simply a celebration of form and colour.
And I think that’s the key to enjoying a painting like Glasgow Kiss. You can get past the point of trying to work out what it looks like and enjoy it for the swirling, fluid mass of brilliance it is. If you can do that then you’ll really start to get what this is about. And at that I’ll leave you to finish the story off for yourself. Good luck!