After taking a break from painting for a couple of weeks – necessary to avoid burnout, I decided on this smaller work to take a free, experimental approach. Always have to push the boundaries, to try to loosen myself up else I get stuck in a rut!
So for this one, I created most of it using a large palette knife, exploring the effects it creates when spreading paint on in different degrees of thickness, scraping it thin to reveal underlying layers and so forth. I’ve used knives before but only sparingly, for particular effects, not for pretty much an entire painting.
The advantage, for me, with a knife is that it’s totally imprecise. It results in random patterns and shapes, which is actually perfect for clouds – that entire sky is knife work, and using it for the landscape resulted in an abstract feel which I really enjoyed. It’s a great feeling when the tool you’re using accidently creates an effect that you could never have thought of yourself.
The painting itself is reminiscent of my magical winter morning walks to the office where I used to work, through the freezing mists and frosts of Canberra, the sun rising and colouring the mist in pinks and golds, the hills illuminated in a vivid orange.
“The Morning Walk” is acrylic and acrylic ink on 41x61cm hardboard.
