A whole month has passed since I last wrote. I've been working in three different directions which, on reflection, is not helping. It's just been too darn cold to be out in the shed knocking up some curved panels so I've set that particular idea aside. Instead, I'm exploring the idea of semi-transparent, skin-like paintings which could be stretched, hung, suspended in a middle space.I must face facts: I'm obsessed with the hidden history of surfaces, so this has instigated a need to look through, beyond - produce something more obviously layered, more illusory depth, a sense of transience, of passing through. The first image here (a detail) evokes the striations of ploughed fields and the the muddy imprints of traffic. The downside is that I am using stretched plastic which slows the surface drying. At some point they will be released from the backing, after which I can experiment with bending, curving, etc.
One of eight mud-like paintings - actually it's chalk mixed in with acrylic metallic paint on plastic. At some point, I will release it from the polythene backing -the acrylic adding some pliability so it's less brittle...
[close up of another coated 'plastic' painting; this is backlit and around 40cm square]And here are some of the smaller textured panels that I have started...
[these are 23cm square and 5cm deep]
[detail...]
[another close up of textures...]They appear to have evolved into heavily eroded and patinated surfaces which resemble a reality - believable and yet entirely faux. These are the details I would discover (as found paintings or photographs) - in the rot of a wooden fence, a derelict outbuilding, discarded, corroded objects. Having now photographed them, they have ceased to be just images of paintings, but further investigations into surfaces - photography through process validating or making a new artwork, or a documentary realism in a similar manner to my found paintings.I also took some close-up polaroids of them, all of which came out slightly blurred with a blue hue... I will have to scan them soon and see what results...