Negative Painting
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Over the past 20 years I’ve learned that the way to exploit the real beauty of paints is through the interplay of transparency, texture, layers, and opaques.
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Principally a colourist, I love to create luminosity, atmosphere, and movement, whilst at the same time exploring how to portray the backlit patterns of tangled vines, thickets, and streams of my local area!
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Most artists paint in the positive - ie adding shapes and layers on top of each other to create the form but I use a subtractive approach and paint the spaces around the item rather than painting the item itself ie I carve around the shapes of my subject and leaving the initial transparent colours unsullied.
The animation to the right shows the layers involved when painting "in the negative" Some of my paintings have 20+ layers but are still fresh and “clean” - click the arrow to see the process.