Out of Black

My latest set of pictures all started black. It is mid winter and the news has been bad. But I like black, 'the Queen of all colours' as I think Renoir said. I have included some black (and white) in nearly every picture I have painted. It was good to read that the designer Charley Harper does the same, for the same reasons (so that there are a full range of tones in the picture, keeping things alive).

To get things going with these paintings I 'puddled' a mixture of a lighter black (anthracite) with another colour to create a presence and a mood. Then I used a combination of objects, including a very useful chopped up draining mat, as stencils for spraying with Liquitex aerosols.

The picture below, 'Night Before', inhabited by a host of floating shapes and structures, is now complete.

Not so this next one. It has been well and truly 'started off', but I have no idea what shapes, lines and colours are going to take it to completion. That's the thrill of it.