recording the process (rust triptych) 7

The canvases are painted! The first coat anyway, so I won’t bore you with the pics. At least I’ve got rid of the white!

I’ve decided to run with the bondaweb idea Post 3 so have painted a couple of sheets ready for bonding. The bottom sheet is painted with all metallic finish paints. These came from Homebase and are from their Creative Effects range.





I also painted a sheet of tissue paper with spent Procion dyes and quite like the effect of this piece as a whole, so I may not be able to persuade myself to tear it up!



Lastly, before I cleared up I mono printed what was left of the acrylic and got some rather nice print offs that will be handy for another day, so never waste anything!




I’ve also been looking at the idea of embedding the textiles in resin, to take them into another dimension, so they then become non tactile and rigid! I think it may help to integrate the stitched part of this project with the other media I’m using.





Regarding the direction of the content of this piece I have returned to the composite ideas as I feel that I want to include the history of the original source, Hurst Castle.
This has become more poignant after discussions with a friend who is currently doing a Fine Art degree. During one of her crits she was asked, “what do you want the work to say? ”, which she then asked me. From this we talked about my feelings for the fort (as I prefer to call it) and how they were infusing the work so far. I couldn’t understand how I was producing such vibrant colours and what appeared to be sun orbs from a place that was built for protection against invasion.

We finally tracked this down to the fact that HC had never seen action in the 2 World Wars, so, maybe it was more a sense of safety and containment that I had felt once inside it’s massive walls. Also you can only see the sky when on the ground level and hear the sea, so maybe that’s why the blues and yellow were coming through.

However once I started on the composites and introduced the images of the huge guns that had so captured my imagination, I started to see a very different reaction. I could then see fire and explosion in the work and the ‘awful ‘ power of these beasts, and how they dwarfed the men who fired them. This is the third composite, the other 2 are on Post 6



I do feel more settled in my direction now, but that could have something to do with the fact that I have my security blanket (my Imac and PS) back in place.

Anyway I had a good day in the studio yesterday and enjoyed the freedom of just letting things flow, so I’m going to see if I can preserve that feeling as I progress with the project.