Monday 10 July 2017

Signals


OK, this isn't my usual kind of thing, but I have done a few non-objective (abstract) paintings in the past. This one is heavily influenced by the style of an American artist, Mark Mehaffey, who applies watercolour and gouache to a surface called YUPO paper. It isn't really paper, it's plastic, and it doesn't absorb paint. That means you have to let the paint dry - very slowly - through evaporation only. The beauty of YUPO is that you can quickly and easily remove areas of paint later on, which you can't do with conventional watercolour paper. In fact, you need to make the removal of paint part of the painting process to get the best out of YUPO.

Anyway, I got hold of some YUPO last year and dabbled with it for a while. More recently I took it up again, borrowed some of Mark Mehaffey's techniques and added a couple of modifications of my own. I call my first effort "Signals". I think it has a bit of a sci-fi vibe, with a suggestion of stars and galaxies, and I completed it by adding circles to indicate radio transmissions from deep space. Even if you don't get it, well, it's colourful, don't you think?

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