A WORLD OF COLOUR
Updated: Jun 8, 2020
This time last year (and even the year before that) I used every colour I could think of, all on the same page, high contrast, vibrant chaos. Works such my “Play” collage series are perfect example of this. Lately, doing this in the studio has felt overwhelming. So, I have opted for a more considered and restricted approach. Part of being an artist I have learnt is the management of your time and resources. Colour, really is a resource. If I want to focus on my process of abstraction and what this means to how I paint (aka - the shapes that my marks form on the page, where these come from, what they mean, what there purpose is etc:) reducing the colour palette was my way of allowing this.
Choosing colours for this new series of paintings came from many different sources. I wanted to get to know grey more after learning about warm and cool tones in grey and their effect on other colours through an ink illustration tutorial. I set myself challenges like “is it possible to make heritage red and green sexy?” I love light blue, but found it usually contrasts with everything I pair it with, so this was an attempt to create some friends for my favourite colour. In this process I phased out light blue in favour for a more blueish range of greys, finding their duller hue and deep tone a better match for softer pinks and creams.
And finally, as this series was created after months of drawing studies of bodies and trees, I wanted the original visual blueprint of the forms used to be referenced in my palette. This is a sneaky trick that I like to include in how I abstract the original visuals of my work - taking parts of what would be recognisable (aka the shape of a leg or the colours of a tree) and mixing them together in to a single composition - a visual memories smorgasbord.