
This is the largest painting I have done in many, many years.
Fire Storm measures 1200 x 800 mm. It has gone thorugh 3 stages to reach this very roughly textured oil painting. I am going to take it to the Made on the Left market and maybe it will sell. Although it does have a $700 price tag and I don’t know many people that carry that cash in their pocket!
How I am going to display it to effect is another issues I haven’t quite worked out yet…
I was thinking and looking at the colours of the burnt and rejuvinating bush across the road from our house. The brown of the earth without ground cover, the black of the charred trees, the reds and oranges of fire and light. And then the greens. At first the bright, almost fluroescent green of new shoots and the darker green they become.
During this paintings second incarnation I had laid down a glue and saw dust mixture. Then glued small sticks and bark down in various areas. At the start of the third (and final) stage I covered the canvas in small strokes of glue and sand. These seem a very prominant aspect of my paintings and drawings of late.
They call up many images in my head, many symbols of greater stories.
One being markers of time, such as you might see on prison walls or carved into school desks. A record of a day, hour, minute passed without other tangible means to remember it.
Not just units of time, also abstracted symbols of physical presence. One mark represents one object. Repetition. The marks themselves are repetitious to the viewer (unit value), but it also took a lot of repetition on my part to make them (time).
Another is the birds eye view of armies marching, walking, waiting. Individuals caught in a greater format or structure.