Helianthus

Helianthus is a huge original abstract painting crated with all colours of the spectrum and using a rotating table to get those amazing effects. In fact, the spin table I made for this painting is (at the time or writing) the largest in the world.

The biggest spinner?

Yes, that’s right. The platform size is in fact 3.2m x 3.2m which gives a corner-to-corner span of 4.8m! That required some careful engineering, assembly and a considerable list of upgrades. The table is a design of our own and is powered by a wheelchair motor. It’s quite the impressive thing.

When all that was sorted out and tested it was time to get a fresh piece of canvas on and get painting.

Not as easy as it looks

One of the most difficult things with a canvas of this size is getting into the middle. Now, the finished size of the painting may be 200cm square, but it started out as a 300cm square and subsequently cut down to the size that looked the best.

The only way of getting onto the centre to put the paint on was to rig up a long ladder onto some A Frames and place it across the long span of the canvas. This has enabled me to climb up on the ladder and sit across the table to apply paint; the ladder has become a giant bridge.

Sunflowers

In the name, this huge painting is an homage to the sunflower and its genus. That big orange centre is as hot as the sun and carries an extraordinary amount of detail – even before you start looking at the radiant colours that surround it.

It was made up of different layers over several weeks and each one was rotated so that the paint would move out towards the edges.

If you have a large open space to fill like an entrance hallway, dining room or double height space then this is going to look amazing!