An original painting with multi-coloured lines and stripes
I like lines; lines are good. Lines are your friends
Regular, reliable and linear, unless I get hold of them, then there’s no telling what will happen.
Landscape Orientation
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Portrait Orientation
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Take a line. Put another line next to it, change the colour, then change the colour again. Make the next one thinner, then make it blend with the next one, then stop it half way down and make it wider but not too wide otherwise it will look unbalanced and heavy but then it might look OK so try it. OK well then go over it again. And again. And again.
Repeat until your head throbs and your eyes hurt. Then start again on the next layer.
There is no easy way to control linear shapes. And it’s even trickier where gravity is involved. Add the above variations to an inherently sticky paint and you can begin to see why it has taken me nearly a year of trial and error to get the lines paintings to work.
But work they do. Very well.
In both landscape and portrait orientations this painting is a vibrant and joyous celebration of colour and shape; the two things that drive me the most. So it’s an incredibly pure form of self-expression. I like things in their correct places, I have no room for chaos. It’s fuss and disorganization that annoys me the most. It stops me from getting on with things.
That said there is always scope for impulse and spontaneity. In many respects nature challenges me with those every time I open a tin of paint. But when I tame these randomized demons the result is something that connects on many levels and as such the lines and stripes (in some of my most recent work) are amongst the most rewarding I have ever painted
And that coming from an artist who is know for his apparent ‘chaos’. Well you now know differently.
