Natural Cycles

I watched a program on Discovery channel about the birth and death of a star, maybe our sun? I thought that might be a good follow on from the theme of MY BEAUTIFUL EARTH SERIES. 

The idea about this was that the star will become bigger and bigger as time passes. It will consume everything in its path when this happens, e.g. it will consume earth. 

(I know it sounds very doomsday!!!)

It will eventually explode due to the forming of certain metals, minerals and chemicals as it expands. When that happens it will leave a supernova in its place (and maybe even a black hole…..), but the end result is that it will be the beginning of something new.

Something like the reverse or start of what we believe when we are saying “from dust to dust”, as all the building blocks of our bodies can be found out there after the explosion took place.

 This process can take as long as millions of years and is not easy to understand by humans.

 I foresee that this series will consist out of 8 paintings, 24 x 24, acrylic on canvas.

Painting 1 - Blissfully unaware

To make this painting I used very little intervention from my paintbrush. Most of the colours and patterns were made by dripping or pouring the paint onto the canvas and then picking the canvas up and moving it around. E.g. tilting it for the straight lines and turning it from side to side for the other patterns. I filled the insides of the buildings in by dripping paint into the spaces in between the paint runs and letting the paint mix at free will to make new colours and patterns. This is a very wet method to work with and need patience. if you put the next layer on too quickly you can easily land up with brown!

Painting 1 Painting 1 Start and below Work in progress  

Painting 1 Final

I like this. It's vibrant, colourful and exactly how I intended it to be. It is also more interesting than painting 2. At this stage I do not contemplate adding anything else to the painting, but I will wait until it is completely dry to see what happens.

Painting 2 -"It seems OK"  - working Painting 20 x 20

Painting 2 is still very much in progress. This is the working painting on 20x20 size canvas. I am experimenting with colours and composition. I do think that it might end up similar to painting1 and that the flowers might just be changing colour - not so pink but a bit more brown. The sky will probably include some darker or grey clouds. The final painting will be done on 24 x 24 canvas with acrylic paint.

Painting 3 - Progress? - Working Painting 20 x 20

In my mind I had a visual picture of how I would like this painting 3 to look like. It had to be much more free than painting 2. I had to revert to let the paint do the work and not force the paintbrush to make lines that I thought should be represented from the working drawings. I did exactly that and I was surprised. I did many different layers of wet on wet and then when it was all dried I put thicker paint on, which which was not painted, but instead I moved the canvas around to get the desired effect.

I liked this a lot and was inspired to start with the painting 3 which will be showed at the exhibition. In the end, I might include this one as well. Size 20 x 20 Acrylic on canvas.