It’s Gold

From The Red, Black and Gold series 

In every one of my paintings, I wanted to show something that ‘belongs’ to me as an artist. Something that came from my conception, the scenery around me or even my choice of technique.

Take a look at this pair of paintings before you read about them. They happen to be two of my favorite personal works because I used my own original technique to create them.

Let me start by saying that both of these paintings were inspired by stone. Rock. I love the shape, colour and feel of stone. I even have books about them. They represent strength and I wanted to bring that into my paintings.

From there, I started to work. I chose to abstract the stone by simplifying the shape and the texture. This is something that I generally don’t do. I like flat surfaces and usually don’t use heavy texture. But stone is strong and I wanted to capture that.

Painting them with wax is what I feel made them special. The cracks in the surface were made by mixing hot wax with pigment on the canvas and the texture was made by mixing cold wax with gold powder. It’s a complete experimental way to implement this technique and in playing with these mediums, you can discover many unique ways to paint with wax. I used three gold colours to emphasize the gradation of the colour.

Abstract art is an experimental art and if you just work to invent your own way of creating visual dimensions, you will be so much more satisfied with the originality.