Who Inspires? What inspires?

Cecily Brown

Arshille Gorky

Playing around with Varnish and thinned down oil paint.

When varnish and thinned oil paint meet their texture allows them to to bleed into each other.

Without forcing the two the oil branches into the varnish forming craters of colour next to the translucency of the varnish. I am interested in how this may work within a painting.








This experiment is a mixture of oil and acrylic paint. the thickness of the oil paint washes in to and over the acrylic, while the watery fluid of acrylic flows over the paper. I manipulated the paper to force the paint to move around so that it may mix, I found that the oil and acrylic repelled each other.

Dr Alison Green and Dexter Dalwood

Dexter Dalwood, study for 'The trial of Milosevic', oil on canvas.

Listening to Dexter Dalwood speak about the painting 'The Trial of Milosevic' was a fascinating insite into how he prepares and thinks about creating a painting. His interest in history and political issues feed his work. He attempts to paint things which have not yet been painted, situations and issues which surround our current world. Dexter has been influenced by work such as Édouard Manet's The Execution of Maximilian, 1868-69 (image below). Also by Bellini paintings like The Assassination of St. Peter, (below).

Giovanni Bellini's The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr (1507) 

The Bay Of Pigs, Dexter Dalwood

Paintings from Past winners of the John Moores Painting Prize

Detail from Peter Doig Painting 'Blotter'.

Slump/Fear (orange/black) 2004 Alexis Harding

"Juggernaut with Plume - fot P.Neruda" 1976 John Walker

Blotter 1993 Peter Doig

Creation and Crucifixion 1957 Jack Smith

Dripping Paint

Primed canvas with thinned oil paint allowed to drip from the top of canvas. 

Thin washes of oil paint.

Oil paint bleeding out onto canvas.

During these experiments I realised that the oil paint seemed to loose its 'glossyness' the thinness of the paint was what I thought I wanted, however the dullness of colour made the outcome boring and bland. I realised that the primed surface was not sealed as well as it could have been and was therefore drawing the colour from the painting. I then decided to research surfaces and what actually happens to the paint depending on the surface it is applied to. 

Images from Liverpool

Liverpool: loads to see interesting sites and stunning buildings!

Images from Liverpool

PAINTING: PULLED, STRETCHED, REVEALED / 25/10/12 - 23/11/12 SIMON CALLERY / ALEXIS HARDING / JAN MAARTEN VOSKUIL

Turner, 2011, Alexis Harding, oil and gloss paint on panel, 122cm diameter

Informed by contact with archaeological excavation sites, Simon Callery’s canvases are cut open to reveal the interior body of the work, or hang at disjointed angles, exposing their internal supporting structures.
Where Simon Callery’s irregular frameworks support canvases painted in absorbent muted hues, the work of Jan Maarten Voskuil is characterised by smooth curves and bright, monochromatic colours held taught by precisely engineered structures. Both artists have expanded the notion of thecanvas stretcher to thrust the picture plane out into the viewer’s space, yet Voskuil’s work often responds to architecture, curving around corners and between walls. 

Simon Callery,Test Pit Painting, 2009, canvas, wood, oil, distemper, 182 x 82 x 40cm

Pointless cornered perspective orange, 2012, Jan Maarten Voskuil, acrylic on linen, 100 x 40 x 20cm

Alexis Harding similarly roots his work in the language of abstract painting but aims to fundamentally change it; to harness and stretch it to its limits. Where Voskuil enhances the structure that supports the painting, Harding focuses on the paint itself. By mixing oils and household paints he causes paint to dry far more slowly, leaving a hardened layer on the surface which moves over a still viscous layer below. For Harding, painting is a process, a skin, a physically tangible substance manipulated by the will of gravity or grabbed and pulled by the artist’s own hand.

Add Broken Line (Snapped Noose), 2010,Alexis Harding, oil and gloss paint on panel, 244 x 122cm

Painting with loose paint scraped from palatte

Experiment with oil, acrylic and varnish on canvas.

At the beginning of term I felt like I was in a transitional period. I needed to play around with paint more so than before. I have been making big oil paintings but often felt like there was something missing. I often troubled myself with issues of colour but looking back now, it may have actually been composition which was confusing me.

Add captionExperiment with oil, acrylic and varnish on canvas.

'Untitled' paintings in show at the beginning of stage 2.

Scrapings of paint from palette purposefully  dropped to the floor.

Each time I clean my palette I am fascinated with the colours and the mass of paint that is randomly placed on the palette, I carefully scrape it clean, trying to keep the scrapings as intact as possible.  These paintings are an attempt to make paintings from random placement of colour. I allowed the paint to merge with varnish the pushed and pulled the paint through the varnish. I left the paintings in an up right position, to allow the paint to drip and fall without my control.