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Wall drawing progress in studio 30 at Toi Pōneke
July 2019

Observations so far:

• One litre of paint isn’t very much, but will have to be just enough for testing.
• Pre-cut vinyl may be a way to speed up the install process. It will also improve the accuracy of translating the original drawing from digital to analogue.
• Time spent painting is fraction of the install time, though drying and curing times extend this.
• While the blue (named Elvis) feels right for this test piece, it could be too heavy over several walls, moving from joyous to oppressive.
• It’s great having a studio space again, to have somewhere to go to make work.
• I really want to take the tape off.

Needing a wall to test some ideas on I’m fortunate enough to be back in my old studio space for a couple of weeks.

During this time I’ll trial ways of executing a new wall work, explore combinations of work and if possible, find out how far I can push what I can do on the wall before the work fails.

After the first day, I’m pleased the work is beginning to look and feel coherent. Progress has been slower than I’d like but such discoveries are the reason for testing.

Blackout studies
acrylic on paper
2019

Working on blank paper I initially miss the given structure of the printed page. The placement of text and image, often on an underlying grid, gave me something to black out, to work with and against. A blank page offers no such structure. There’s nothing to work against, save for the edge. Anything goes.

Most of this week has been about the logistics of art. Sorting out a test space, writing lists of the bits and pieces I need to purchase, nutting out the steps to execute a work, drawing things to scale on my laptop and more.

I also made time for a few more “blackout drawings”. I’m really enjoying the way the paint behaves on the paper surface. The glossy magazine pages are less absorbent than uncoated paper and yet still provide a nice degree of resistance to the brush.

In this latest batch, I’m thinking some of the drawings may benefit from being worked over with a different colour and a thinner brush – something else to add to my lists of things to do.

Following my instincts, pushing paint around on pages torn from an old art magazine. Blacking out the recognisable, the art, the people, the blocks of text to create new forms and compositions.