Playing with space.

If a good design is all about differences, then being able to add glazes has really helped me to move forward. In these two panels I have used the difference between thin and thick paint to make the surface interesting, or really to make it disappear, which is more my preference. Depth is created because the glaze makes areas behind it recede and thick paint on top of that comes forward. You can start to make a kind of rhythm out of it as marks have various impacts on each other. The dry opaque marks near the pictorial surface are satisfyingly different to the watery glazy marks.

In the purple one particularly, I like the difference between dynamic brushmarks and rigid square areas. I wanted to get more structure into my paintings, and this could be a way of combining that with my old floaty ‘hand of the artist’ marks. I have created some space here for them to travel into and I think that is progress.