Painting

I've not painted onto canvas since high school some mumbley-years ago. I found myself in the acrylic paints aisle at Atlantis Art staring at some incredibly shiny paints. Sometimes I wander the art stores just to see what's there, to try to find something to spark something hiding in my tired brain.

By the till they have impulse purchase buys like 3x4inch (by a depth of about an inch) canvases for 74p. Somehow a plan was forming...

I recently went to the Saatchi Gallery randomly while waiting to attend a surprise party for a friend. Most of the art left me hating all modern art. It made me angry. No wonder people think modern art is bullshit :/ The only thing that was amazing was the pool of used motor oil in the basement. The smell was amazing. It screwed with your head staring at its shiny surface and thinking there's this huge illusion of depth to it (hey kinda like the infinity box...) It's huge. We spent forever staring into the abyss, watching the air conditioning unit create very tiny ripples in the surface.

Anyway, upstairs was a temporary exhibit that had only opened a few days previously. The odd thing about the Saatchi Gallery is that they let you take pictures. So I took some pictures of this exhibit of really big, bold flower paintings. The acrylic paint was just squeezed onto the canvas direct from the tube. It was skillfully done. Purposeful yet simple, yet complex. I really thought paintings like that wouldn't affect me like that ever.

Last night I was faced with a black canvas. Since the canvases are so deep and won't be framed, they need to be painted all the way around... so why not play on it? Turning the canvas into a sculpture, or a zen garden, where you can't see all of the painting at any one angle. Enforced playing of it in your hands.

So I painted a little painting.


This morning I decided I didn't really need a brush... and squirted out paint onto the bigger canvases.

I did decide to shape it a little with a small brush... I'm wondering how many days it's going to take to dry. It's so tempting to touch it but I know I'll just end up covered in paint if I do.