I’ve been racking my brains about how to key the triptych of conventional, aspirational and personal symbols into the wider set of symbols. The triptych is black and white and I think it needs to be like that – ie colour neutral. Yet all the others images are red and yellow with a blue accent.
While pondering this, and looking at available materials for ideas, I saw some lino and cutting gear that Greg used to use and decided to experiment with it. My idea was to use the lino as a sculpture rather than to print with it. The first thing I did was to create the image.
While I was happy with the shape of the cut its 12cm square size was a problem as I needed this to be 1) black so it worked off the triptych and 2) large, but not the same size as other paintings already made. I also wanted to emphasise the primitiveness of the work and so did not thing sticking it in a large frame would help. I then came up with this idea below.
I took a 60cm by 60 cm incontinence sheet and painted it with white emulsion to both give it some stiffness and depth.
I let that dry and then applied a high back gloss paint over the whole thing. This created a faux stone type of effect which worked well with the general approach.
The problem was going to be how to insert the lino into the sheet as I wanted an embedded look rather than it sitting on top of the sheet.
So I measured up the lino and then made cut a whole slightly smaller than the lino and inserted it in, making sure I turned the edges inward as I went. I then stuck the whole lot on some painted cardboard from the back so that it was all fixed together and could be hung.
The result is this 60 by 60 cm sort of primitive sculpture. (I left all the odd paint marks on it because I think it looks better that way).
I think the image works well by itself and as a part of the set and definitely keys in the triptych.
I really like the range of forms of presentation here – the range of textures, colours, scale and finishes work well in delivering slightly different messages.
anomiepete 