Just experimenting all year long

 

2023 has turned out to be year of experimentation.  Hardly any intended paintings. Sketchbooks, A4 colour tests, a brief return to Indian sculpture, Posca pens, departing from my favourite palettes, taking risks with as much as I could. 

I got a couple of images that interested me in terms of line or colour from the return to the Indian sculptures:

but  that didn't last long. I realised that I was just destroying the beauty that had always captivated me and was not really succeeding in taking them anywhere new.

Then there were a couple of paintings that completed some personal work, making that a private trilogy.

Posca pens...

And then some oil painting experiments...

Finally I landed on the Pith sketchbook in a landscape format, that when I worked over both pages became a kind of long narrative, like an Indian storytelling scroll.

Strangely, and somewhat accidentally, I ended up making some paintings, though I didn't know I was doing so at the time. The best way.

Storylandscapes 2023 video