Voyage to Paradise

About this painting

Voyage to Paradise is a small sized abstract painting created with a series of different colored enamel paints. These include yellow, blue, lilac, turquoise and orange. If you’ve seen other paintings of mine like this then it will come as no surprise to learn that this was created on my spin table – a bespoke built machine I use a lot.

The machine does one job and does it very well. So the trick is to reimagine ways in which I can maneuver paint and also to play around with different tools and concepts. There are always so many variables at work whenever I fire up the table so i do need to have plans beforehand otherwise things turn to shit very quickly.

Balance is everything

It’s very easy to load paint in an uneven way or put a colour combination together that feels wrong. So, as with all compositions, finding a balance between what feels right and what looks right is always important.

Here’s an explanation of what I mean.

See the big mass of yellow that sits to the one side of the arc? Well it definitely isn’t matched on the others ide so to counter that i swung the direction of the separating arc around the smaller mass of yellow to give the impression that it’s larger than it is. In one gesture of a tool i have changed the entire dynamic of the painting. Sometimes it really is that critical and decisive.

The end result

The finished painting is not only light and airy but it also has a very interesting series of effects. Cells, striations, craters, fans, rivers and valleys – they’re all there somewhere and packed into a deceptively small surface area of canvas.

What you get then is a very uplifting artwork that can fit into most spaces and one that has an elemental feel to it – bringing you closer to rain forests and tropical oceans. Can’t go wrong with that really!