“Cadmium Red & Mars Black Untitled #1” whilst made very quickly in portrait orientation is in fact an abstract. I only noticed the side profile head shape afterwards upon photographing the wet painting. My own focus 100% on making contrasts with the red, black and palette knife textures.
The work is subconsciously inspired of Frank Auerbach.
I photographed this piece on a black cloth vest with light blocking-surrounds excluding camera flash. In effect the piece appears to make its own light since I photographed this completely under shadow.
If you view the work in portrait at 180 degrees you might distinguish a squirrel (in side profile), perhaps a rabbit or some other cute fanciful like-creature facing the viewer.
nb Produced in one draft with my favoured palette tool. One tidying draft millimetres around the edge with brush only. I carefully retained the entire main abstract working seen here from the first draft exactly as spontaneously made.
I do not know how the human portrait formed from an abstract.
Next we have “Fragments #1”:
Do you see Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton?
On 19th December I utilised two A4 papers on the same day with random paint scrages from an as yet unpublished mixed media piece on A3 (“Conker Lots”).
These became “Orange & Violet Untitled” and this work “Fragments #1”.
“Orange & Violet Untitled” featured a predominantly Mars Black ground, inadvertently influenced by the formation of ‘guitar pegs’ around the portrait head.
“Fragments #1” also features Mars Black, somewhat already preplaced randomly. To this I added orange with an umber acrylic mix, carefully balancing colours on the canvas paper.
My intuitive brush scrapes of “Fragments #1”in a Cy Twombly style unintentionally collaborating with the Jean-Michel Basquiat style purposed in “Orange & Violet Untitled”.
As an artist I’m immensely intrigued to how viewers respond to “Fragments #1”.
Next is “Pitchfork Hands Man”:
I made “Pitchfork Hands Man” on 20th January 2025. On 8th February 2025 I read a CNN article (you can click the link to see the article) detailing a man knocking over a 19th Century candelabra at St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican!
Let’s give more information about the artwork itself.
The lined Notepad paper with lovely textured inner cadmium-red paint looked rather arty. It’s paint scrapes originated from another recent work.
I began to paint play with sap green, cadmium-orange and then cadmium-yellow on the lined Notepad paper ensuring I retained all the beautiful red premarked paint.
Whilst making this I randomly scraped a brush loaded with yellow onto slightly premarked A3. With this separate A3 I began making hair, eyes and a face for fun.
Seeing potential I decided to intuitively place the Notepad piece centrally to produce a Pop Art character. I painted around the Notepad-body in gold to make the lined paper part of the A3 artwork.
Intriguingly if you turn the A3 anticlockwise 90 degrees to the left, the yellow eyes at your lower-left, I perceive a large authoritative head and face from the lined Notepad paper. This new character is not planned, merely a result of my retaining the premarked textured red paint.
Pitchfork hands each with seven prongs were added to complete the piece.
Finally for this blog article we have “Laughing Lion Eye” here:
Personal quote on 11th February 2025:
“i genuinely made this in landscape with what became an eye at the upper mid centre-right. Seeing potential i turned this 90 degrees into portrait, et voila. i mixed red, green, blue (this afternoon) as i am out of pre-mixed black, making the definition outlines you see. this kind of piece is immensely exciting to me for its spontaneity.”
The ‘laughing lion’ in the eye is 100% chance. I didn’t notice this strange animalistic formation until photography again on 11th February.
I had no intention of making a portrait character prior to turning the painting 90 degrees.
Hope you have immensely enjoyed a flurry of portrait publishing to my blog in this article.
