deliquescence

when we first moved into the current location of tgf world headquarters, i was driven to create a couple of paintings. i don't paint with a plan. i haven't got a style or a model against which i paint. i paint what happens. it's only when i am inside a painting that the language of the piece and then the form and colour it takes presents itself. that is usually the most difficult part of painting for me. when i see the solution, the end result, the work of filling in the gaps and connecting the whole together as it wishes or needs to be i almost lose interest. this can be seen in the sketchbooks i have stacked up in a little cupboard that are filled with pieces drafted and sometimes even half coloured or painted but rarely completed. i have become aware of the end and don't want to get there.

these two paintings were unique in that respect because they were very new to me. i had no idea they were coming and so i'll tell you their story. simply, i had access to some sheets of 1/2 inch thick mdf board. mdf is a dense wood product that takes kindly to being cut without splintering, which is really nice if you decide to cut curves into it. i can't remember how i discovered this property for myself but i put it to full advantage in taking my skilsaw and shaping these two pieces. for the first time i was able to cut shapes inside the work as well. the opening allowed me to relate to the work as a more organic looking and feeling process as it was more like it had a body.

i had in my mind the idea of scales or pieces that fit together, flowing through colour so that when i painted i mixed the colour i was painting which became the colour i was "leaving", which in turn became the colour i was moving towards. a single scale then might have dozens of shades inside it as you move your eyes across it. i love this property of colour and it's one of the few reasons i like to visit paint stores - for the displays of colour chips. it's why i still love pencil crayon and marker sets - to allow my eyes to rove over the rows of tiny perfectly pointed dots of colour.

this painting hangs in the stairwell of our home. it's about a metre and a half tall and about two thirds of a metre wide. it has no name although in my memory i think i used the term "deliquescence" to remember the pieces. deliquescence is the phenomenon of a substance absorbing so much moisture from the air that it ultimately dissolves in it to form a solution . . . in typical golden fish fashion i have messed with the concept to suggest a kind of morphing process as a colour absorbs other colours around it and transmutates over a defined space. i would really like to do something that is actually "alive" in the sense that something pixillated can be "alive".

this painting resides in a space under the basement stairs as it hasn't found a home yet. it's about half a metre wide and probably a metre and a quarter long. it did hang for a while in our living room but that was not the right space for it.