‘amber to bisque’ or ‘yellow casing’?
I found titling this piece very difficult, and I am not pleased with either of two as post rationalisations. But both are descriptive. As an aside, I am trying to avoid using ‘untitled’ at the moment for several reasons - clear titles help to remember each piece and to help in the archiving. Also, Untitled is a title but how untitled is ‘untitled’… I rest my case.
I enjoy the process of titling my work, and it usually comes easily to me. Here, the sequential nature of the constructed painting, alongside strong feelings about the colour yellow, impaired putting a satisfactory name to the piece. A monochromatic yellow painting declares itself by its very colour… a title is perhaps superfluous.
A Surface Layered with Meaning
The compound surface of the piece is fastened directly to the wooden case or box which acts as the support. The first layers, mixtures of plaster, waxes and resin are painted flat. The last ‘burying layer’ is made from layers of resin and spray paint.
This layer was painted at an angle giving the side views an oblique line.
Raw Aesthetics and the Beauty of Process
I wanted the sides to be comparable to a graph perhaps reminiscent of the more minimal abstract work by Diebenkorn.
Indeed, I admire the poetry that arises from his working out of a composition. It is the kind of drawing that takes me back to Matisse and Picasso charcoal scrubbed pieces. Preparatory lines and process are the ‘raison d’être’ of the final image.
I like this raw approach, the mechanics of a piece are the expressed aesthetic and have the freshness of a sketch.
The sides are then dusty, rough and stained - a sort of construction site that then carries the complex stratified yellow. Construction finally becomes painting, from dark foundation into lush edible light.
The yellow wedge from the side is also a ‘primitive’ graph for a light beam.
The initial top layer is constituted of a sequence of pale pink and salmon pigments mixed with mica and plaster. I had, initially, the ambition to make a complex landscape as the resulting final layer. I liked the random structures of this but not the too easy readability of it.
I am looking to make, as is often with me, something complex with a deceptively simple enveloping resolution. I like to show the ankle of the piece to entice the eye, and draw the viewer towards and beneath the surface. This comes directly from a long standing fascination with anatomy, ‘complexity enveloped by a membrane’.
Yellow as a Force in Art
It had also been in my head for a long time to make something in that ever persistent colour ‘yellow’. A hue that is so many things to so many people; it can be a whoring colour, kitsch and brazen, it can be metaphor for enduring royalty and glamour, but rising above them all is yellow’s force as nature’s balm and blazon of life. And always, yellows take me straight to Van Gogh, the greatest poet of yellow in painting.
Yellow then takes the piece over, yellow glazes flood the existing surface of the painting. Resin keeps the yellow translucent and spray paint causes texture and faults in the surface, like flotsam. Nothing is pure but like a skin it has a totality to it.
The wedge angled shape keeps the ‘revealed’ surface uneven. Glimpses of the interior surfaces are veiled by depths of resin. What was once a bisque structure is now a glowing pinkish residue within. Construction, painting, drawing or object, the piece is an armature for the yellow amber glimmer. It is a piece of yellow… not a bad title too - ‘p i e c e o f y e l l o w.’