Temporal Rift

Changing the materials

Temporal Rift is a very different kind of painting for me. This is mainly because of the materials I have used in creating it. Sure, the enamel paint is there in some quantity but the main component here is resin.

This starts out as a liquid that you mix with a hardener that then cures to form a solid. Think paperweights and you get the idea. There are many artist using resin these days but very few attempt to paint big with it and almost none (that we can find anyway) do it on canvas.

The reason for that is the weight of resin. Imagine the weakest point of the canvas – it’s the centre. So the natural behaviour of a suspended material like canvas is to sag at its weakest point (the middle) when it is forced to carry weight. We, however, have invented a system that means we can put as much resin on as we want and never see any sagging! Pretty cool right?

Doing it all LIVE!

I created this in a LIVE painting stream that was broadcast over the internet. So, not only was I attempting to use a new material but also to do it AND make something amazing at the same time. So you can chart the story of its creation by tuning in to watch the live painting stream.

One of the challenges with resin is the pot life (essentially how long you have to work with it until it becomes sticky as the chemical reaction kicks in). So I had to work fast in order to cover a lot of individual applications and mixing. You’ll see just how quickly I have to move in the replay of the video!

As the painting started to appear as I worked on and on it became clear that the use of pigment would only give so much of what I wanted so I eventually mixed some enamel paint with the resin to see what would happen. We don’t think this has been attempted before so it was a complete leap into the unknown.