"Climbing Wall #2"

Many years ago, in my adventurous youth, I used to climb rock faces of varying heights and difficulty. Nowadays my nerve and head for heights only allow me to consider artificial climbing walls in sports centres. On a local climbing wall I noticed the colours of the artificial handholds matched the bright skin-tight lycra-clad athletes scrambling spider-like up impossible overhangs! This painting, as a result, is one of a series of my imaginative ascents… but done in the safety of my own studio.

For the past three or four years I’ve been using my own hands as the subject as well as applying paint with my own hands as the artist’s tools. Originally this was done in old school exercise books and then proper sketchbooks when I realised that archival permanence was far more desirable. I have since progressed using large 3 x 2 meter plastic sheets as my canvas, and this example is typical of the effect of such mural-sized possibilities with artwork.

This particular piece was completed in the Autumn of 2014, and has since been hung in my studio and different living areas, taken down, folded and unfolded, and rehung several times… each time without any of the applied acrylic paint colours peeling-off from the very flexible and lightweight, but strong, backing medium.

The prospective purchaser/collector may choose to hang the artwork by using elasticated bands or tie-cords tethered through the ten (10) built-in metal eyelets conveniently located at all four corners and along the edges… or of course the artwork could be attached to a rigid, custom-made frame. However, at a nominal 300 x 200 cms in dimension the piece is large!