My Developing Practice

The process that I have been developing in my painting has largely come from one photograph. I had interpreted this photograph as a large painting. Some elements of this painting worked and others needed further development but overall it opened up a dialogue that allowed me to take the route I am now following in my research.

 

The relationship between the original printed photograph and the painting it became made me consider how to use light within my paintings. The aspect that worked was the high contrast zone through the middle of the picture, showing the plants ablaze with light and creating contorted shapes. These forms and patterns seem to move and float as if imbued with some kind of energy.

 
I began to sketch these individual forms, foliage of the plants, but not their original design more a manipulated retelling of something that was living. From the static viewpoint the painting created the shapes presented abstracted forms that seem to naturally connect and of course this is because in reality they do but with the high contrast light behind them they become something more, yet retain something of a natural gravity.

 
I began to question how I could interpret this light behind these organic forms by looking at its

impact upon the edge. But what I could see was a type of halo and that this almost magical presence created and a movement and dance. What I'm trying to say is these transparent edges were doing something exciting to these forms.

My sketches became paintings on board and these picked out some of the abstract forms from the master painting, or/and photograph, and then I began to add layers of white, some of them breaking the edge of these forms and in my own way manipulating these natural shapes with my own light.
 
But as I explored this process, the results of which I was very pleased with, I hit a level where if I was be on and say four or five layers of white the plant forms would almost be completely engulfed by this white light, or paint. So I naturally came to a stage when the painting in the sense was completed if I wanted to retain some of the original abstracted forms.

As an aside to this main research I have begun collecting other representations of this phenomena in life. I have been in a number of locations where I have seen similar glowing bodies set against very bright backgrounds. For example figures on a beach, up by the waves, the sun very bright in the background. These human forms have become manipulated by this extreme light. This could be another area of development for my practice, especially considering the paintings I've done already existed in the landscape.