Sargasso Tides

Great colours

Sargasso Tides is a large abstract painting created with layers of painted arc shapes. I used window squeegees of various widths to move paint around on a flat sheet of canvas, gently and carefully building layers on top of each other.

The main colours here are blue and green with accents of purple, gold, pink, black and white added in for a little contrast. I used three types of blue and three types of green – including a new jade tone that I haven’t used before. Two of the blue coloured paints are metallics so there’s a deep lustre in many parts of the painting as light hits and reflects off the metallic elements.

It’s a similar story with the metallic purple and gold. Both these colours really stand out and the way they reflect light is just sublime. So not only do you have all the gentle movements to carry you along on the waves but you also get to marvel in all those rich colourful elements that make the painting a real stand-out piece.

Layering

This particular application technique really lends itself to layering. This is a repeating process of adding paint and dragging it over the paints that are already there. It’s a sequence I can repeat until I have a painting that feels like it’s complete.

You can see just how effective that is when you look at the lime green arcs, for example. Can you see how they sit behind so many others yet still have their own space to poke through? (I timed these paint strokes to perfection as you can see them in the gap through the centre as well as at the edges).

The relationship where curves meet other curves is something I really like to explore, especially when they drag paint from the layers underneath to create new blends and tonal shifts.