Discontinuous Target : Coming Storm Painting

This non-objective painting explores the dynamic inter-relationship between shape, form, colour, pattern, and perception, to reveal the nature of the underlying form. The starting premise for this painting was the reworking of the target motif as a compositional device. Employed in its standard configuration, the target motif comprised of concentric rings is a comforting visual and psychological gestalt. Seeking to disrupt this gestalt within a cohesive composition is the formal aesthetic drive of the painting. I sought to create visual dynamic tensions derived from a gestalt energised by discontinuities, offsets and juxtapositions separated over multiple surfaces. With a predominantly a rationalist, conceptual approach, this painting indicates the parlous state of our Earth’s climate and living environments. The overall motif suggests swirling winds of large storms that wreak havoc on natural and human infrastructures. Wispy tendrils of our planet’s weakened blue and green colours are dominated by acid, petrol-on-water colours fuelling an acceleration of climate chaos. Important to the execution of a hybrid painting, I chose to use Golden’s SoFlat Matte range of acrylic paints to create block areas of colour essentially free from reflections or brushstrokes over the entirety of the undulating surfaces forming the foundational 3-dimensional “structured” canvas.