Since early May this year I have been working on a large scale artwork for a research institute in the Dutch town of Nijmegen. I have never had the chance to work on such a large scale piece of work knowing that the location for it has already been decided. The finished work is close to four metres in width (over twelve feet if you prefer!).
The three panels are based directly on earlier completed paintings although the new versions gave the opportunity to refinement and further development in some areas.
Most of my paintings are essentially quite small. So the chance to work on such an expansive scale has been technically interesting although more so in the area of actually seeing how ideas that worked well on a more intimate scale would scale up. The the paintings show a stretch of bleak landscape that reaches across the panels in combination with bending geometry of the coloured walls. The graphic sharpness of the geometry has been increased from the smaller versions, heightening the tension of the edges of the walls where they meet the sky and where the birds appear to disappear ‘behind the sky.
The ‘ordering’ in the landscape isn’t quite what it would’at first seem. Is it actually a landscape that we are looking at? Or is it a sort of ‘décor’, scenery or film set? Is this the tranquil scene that it at first might appear to be? Where are the birds flying too?
I’ve been documenting the process of development over the last months in a series of photographs. I’ve been doing this mostly for myself, but the short film does give an interesting insight into how these paintings come together in a series of steps.
Peter Sansom 