Sky Study 1

Over the summer and as a result of my Develop You Creative Practice Grant through the Arts Council of England I have been trying in earnest to figure out how to paint in oils. There had been a small window of time in 2020, back when I had a studio in Malmö, Sweden, where I produced a series of studies using water mixable oils that ‘felt’ like something. However the Postal Service then proceeded to lose every one of them and I was back to square one. Everything I made looked muddy. The colours felt awkward and dull. The process was prolonged so layers could dry enough to be added to and coming back to a painting for another sitting is not how I like to work, such a lover of the flow state, there was never any guarantee that when I would return to the painting that my mind would even let me back into the same room from which I had begun the piece. Then there was the part about being unable to replicate the palette I had been using in my sketchbooks with the oil colours I found in my local art shop. When I picked up gouache I had it in mind to limit my palette as small as possible- cyan, magenta, yellow, white, black. This grew a little as the years went by but I was still adamant that with a pure CMYK I could capture a broad colour range yet retain harmony. I just couldn’t get this same approach to work in oils.