Magenta Marvel

During Lockdown 2020, I started a new body of work beginning with abstract sketches. These experimental patterns evolved as I began adding colour and working with fluid shapes to find a balance between pattern, space and colour in my sketchbook. Ideas developed from traces of cultural motifs which have laid in my subconscious and came to the fore as the patterns were created.

The Harmony Patterns use shapes also found in ancient artefacts, to create contemporary imagery with a distinct identity and a nod to the Op art movement. They are innately graphic with an intentionally limited palette developing as the series evolved in the sketchbooks. Two or three colours, usually black, white and a deep colour. These sketches are then loosely translated onto canvas and refined in the painting process.

Pattern is ubiquitous and subliminal. On a visit to the British Museum in 2022, I was struck by the frequency with which certain pattern motifs recurred across cultures. Patterns that I myself was already using in the sketchbook drawings. I wondered why, I saw the same shapes repeatedly emerging e.g. Zigzags, dots, spirals, hash marks etc., These basic components prevail over history, incorporated into ideas of art that are used, in conjunction with local influences, to shape a cultural style distinct to a region.

Magenta Marvel the original sketch had no colour, just black and white. It was rotated compared to the image I created in my sketchbook. By creating the magenta background, I had to solve some visual issues where shapes faded away.

Magenta Marvel suggests Egypt to me. My focus was on the creation of space and the pattern blocks in a combination that created balance. Again, there was a subconscious influence in the results. Like with Yellow Wave, I also see a bird in this one, maybe a Parrot or Puffin?