Latest painting, May 2020 - Untitled

Untitled – [Red stripe with white and pale yellow pastel layers].

I have just completed this painting, it went on hold during lockdown and so the latest layers went on this week.

I have been trying to articulate how some of the transparencies I created on the ply box would translate onto canvas variations. The canvases I order are primed with a white primer, I don’t use rabbit skin glue because I refuse to be involved in animal cruelty as a consumer. So until I find an alternative, this gives me some limitations on how I use the paint when I translate it to canvas. There needs to be an addition of a colour to give the white transparencies something to show up against. The layers in this painting are extremely delicate and hard to photograph to show correctly and the studio lighting is overhead so that makes this task harder.

Hence I have chosen a pastel yellow made from combining fluorescent yellow and white. It’s become an essential part of the painting, not just a layer to form the underlying structure, but also a divider between two layers of ‘leaves’ of transparencies.

There is a rhythm througb the layers from canvas to the upper layers, a sequencing. The layers move outwards / forwards from the base canvas layer through pastel yellow, then white then yellow, they are intersected by the almost three dimensional red line (which itself wraps around the canvas and onto the sides) and the layering of white continues on top of this to seal it in.

If this were expanded out three dimensionally as panels they would be delicate, soft sheets. You could imagine walking through hanging layers or planes of space.

Around the edge to the top right there is a red triangle ‘tag’ device that would link this painting to the next, it’s a feature that has come from the previous studies on ply and the box where the elements of the paintings touch together.

All images © Trudie Moore

© Trudie Moore 2020
Current themes: transparencies, opacities, paint edges, material performance, three dimensional planes, lightness and freshness of colour, purity and expansion to create space.

Trudie Moore 2020

Transparencies and subtleties in my latest painting.

I’m in the process of developing a bigger, three dimensional body of work that expands planes and dimensions within my paintings. Materials are important to me, as much as colour and so I am investigating how the two work together to ensure the surface has an importance in the piece.

A piece I completed around Christmas starts to move into a much more three dimensional space. I enjoy working with materials that have a character of their own which brings a deeper concentration to the planes within the work. Ply has proved to be not just an appealing material with the natural wood grain contrasting with the plasticity and synthetic surface and colour of the paint, but it’s also a good, resistant and smooth surface that gives clean edges and sharp lines and a smoother surface to the paint.

So this has opened up for me various avenues I am exploring, how ideas translate both onto canvas and ply (and other potential materials) and how the elements within the paint itself work with the surface.

In terms of the paint application, there’s an ability with acrylic to create super sheer, delicate layers that can increase and increase in density and be built up to an almost plastic layer which sits elevated on the surface

Untitled [Three dimensional box in ply] .

Amplifying the surface more extremely is an experiment I have been making. My deep frame canvases haven’t been deep enough to carry out the ideas I have been trying over the years and so this three dimensional box is the substantial iteration of that. From the smaller preceding ply studies there were planes of colour that were moving across. This is the next step on where the elements go around the sides and over the top – an element of wrapping the object as well as unfolding around it.

There is a stage on from this of exploring both ‘the material of the canvas’ and ‘the material of the paint’ as separate yet combined elements which constitute the painting.

 

All images © Trudie Moore

Supporting studies .

The studies below experiment with concepts in the pieces above, some are tests, some are works in their own right.

Alongside my fine art practice I undertake commissions and sell existing work. You can find out more here, or learn about the Artist Support Pledge.

Commissions