Balance and uniformity out of chaos are two core principles I stick to when creating my drip art. Without some rules the process of creating breaks down into anarchy. Careless application, poorly executed colours and unbalanced areas can kill a painting. It even demonstrates the lack of thought that has gone into producing it. For me, that would kill my creativity stone dead. If I don’t plan what I’m doing I produce bad art – and you would spot that a mile off.
If disrespected the art of drip will reward you with nothing more than chaos. Which is where the balance comes in.
Many artists are happy to slap paint around with little regard for what they are creating and, more importantly, how this will connect with the viewer. In many of my works I seek to find a stable, linear balance to offset the apparently chaotic nature of the paint applications. The reality is, though, that there are no random acts of chaos in any of my works, despite what you may think or perceive. The whole point of using this pouring and splashing technique is to create something tangible from the intangible. To produce something from nothing.
This piece of art is a bit Jekyll and Hide. On the one hand it looks very balanced, very linear and very ordered – like it follows a strict set of rules. You can almost pick out evenly spaced lines and neatly distributed swathes of colour. Nothing too loud, nothing out of place. From a distance all is calm and ordered. Yet, move closer in and you reveal a shocking truth – the painting is in fact composed of what looks like, random applications of paint – an inherent chaos only evident as you move closer towards it. Suddenly this ordered world is shattered by a multi-layered community of colours, all fighting to get themselves seen.
Yet despite this raging undercurrent of madness the piece is serene and calm, partly due to the colour palette I have chosen and partly to do with the long drip lines. These help to calm the large, overbearing strokes I used to form the background layers.
Suspended Animation measures 122cm x 122cm square and is 50mm thick – having been painted onto a piece of triple-primed canvas, painted, then stretched over a seasoned wooden timber frame. This is a heavy and very solid piece of art! I painted it using industrial grade enamel gloss paints which give a wonderful shine to the piece whenever a bright light source hits it.