I’m trying to ensure I now use colour more pragmatically, avoiding the mistake of falling in love with particular combinations and using them on mass across a series of works. This kills colour, relegating it it to a decorative and non acting part in the drama.

 I’m trying to find the correct pitch for each particular image.

I am working on a series of drawing at the moment of figures squirming, holding their heads (which have been seperated from their bodies) and cavorting like acrobates across the surface. A vibrant Organge and acid Pink have become dominate colours in the initial drawings. i have falling in love with both colours.

I then found myself tempted to chuck these colours onto all the other drawings I am doing, including a series of floating and swimming figures. This would have been a mistake.

The floating figures are melancholic. The images want a quiet tension, a calmness, a solitude, restfullness and in limbo feel. Everything about the particular Orange and Pink goes agasint this.

The reason they work in the ‘boys whose head came off’ series is to do with the mood those pieces seek. They want excess, horror verging on wit, to be pathetically egoticial, bloated melodrama, noisey and ludicrous. The colours intrinsic properties fit in this. Both are saturated, artificial , false and aggressive. I fell for them becasue of a synergy between image and colour.

This is all very obviousy but I had not perhaps appreciated it fully before.