ORIGINAL ARTWORK. Acrylic on stretched canvas with vertical paper collage effect. Ready to hang. 44cm x 44cm x 4cm deep. PRICE $290.
The blank canvas syndrome often snags an artist. I sometimes overcome this dilemma by playing with colours and experimenting with different techniques, without having any visualisation of a subject to represent.
This is an intriguing way to begin a painting. I love the sense of danger that stirs when colours blend without boundaries. Most often the random colours and forms I apply to the canvas trigger forgotten things in my mind and expose a favourable way forward to explore a subject or theme that would have otherwise remained in my brain’s filing cabinet.
On this canvas the first application of colours didn’t elicit a reaction. I then discovered a sheet of baking paper I had used to squish colours onto a panel board in order to create a special effect.
By tearing this paper into long strips and cementing them vertically over the under-colours with a clear acrylic medium, I was presented with a scene I decided to name “The Savage Garden”.
The brain then kicked in and offered the amazing image of a beautiful nude woman hovering over a stark landscape on the cover of a book that I’d read some years before.
There was my subject. Sketches began until I arrived at a suitable composition. After applying this image over the garden using acrylic pens, then colouring the nude’s body with transparent yellow and her wings with transparent blue, my painting was completed – “Flying through the Savage Garden” became its title.