Going large

Elements 暗 (dark), Acrylic on board, 120x120cm
20 Feb - 10 Mar 2020

After a series of monochrome studies on small canvas boards, June (my tutor) urged me to go big. From 30x30cm to 1.2x1.2m is a leap. But I was more excited than nervous. Challenge is good! Standing in front of the large board, I paint moving my whole body. How liberating! I haven’t used boards for a while and this certainly is the biggest board I have ever painted on.

I started with the ground colours, Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine in order to create a more nuanced black, than that from a tube. It went through a lot of changes and I finally reached the end. Ideally, ‘the end’ is marked with a satisfactory ‘This is it, it’s done!’ feeling. But more often than not, it is accompanied with a big sigh and a muttering like ‘This is it, I can’t think of anything I can do to this’. This one was the latter but not with a big sigh. I enjoyed the process of repeating cycles of letting go and regaining control.