Points
Points
I took a leap and started on six canvasses all at once. They were all the same size so I knew that they would all be related to each other. I then did my tried and tested starting moves and painted out brushes from painting sessions where I’d been painting something I knew. I was having fun with a new technique of letting turpentine drip down the canvas and searching for shapes in what it randomly produced. Then I started working into the shapes. As I did, a rainbow started to appear across all six canvasses, but not a rainbow in traditional shape or colour pattern. The stripes of colour are not neatly in order. This began to speak to me theologically; no matter how we humans may like order, that desire is thrown over again and again.
Then I wanted the colours to sing, so I picked dots of the complimentary colour of the shapes already on the canvas. Two complementary colours together make our eyes see the whole colour spectrum at one hit (talk to me…) and they vibrate together as they do that – making the colours sing. As I thought quite deliberately about where to put those points, the phrase of ‘Points on a Spectrum’ leaped into my head. We’re all a point on a spectrum of educational gifts, a point on a spectrum of race/culture, a point on a spectrum of sexual/gender identity, a point on a spectrum of physical ability. We are points, we don’t fit a neat order and we are unique no mater our similarities. But we fit - no matter how others who are points on their various spectrums make us feel.
oil on stretched canvases
2021
35 x 45cm each
Original paintings £475 each
The whole series £2750