Studio Progress August 2025

I had been reading Julie Mehretu’s Notes on Painting and also watched her interview with Tim Marlow during Tate Modern’s American Artists Series. I wanted to make some work with her words fresh in my mind - “Push, scratch, mark, cut, stay… The hand = instrument, device. The hand, the wrist, the gesture, flow, play, spit”.

I had purchased a 10m roll of unprimed canvas, so I rolled it out and put down some dye, Prussian Blue, Sienna and mixed to create the olive green, and also Madder Rouge and Brazilian Clay powder. I scratched into the surface and allowed the dye to flow and drip. It started to look like a big tapestry piece. However, with the concept of making and unmaking in mind, I decided to rip up the canvas into sections and stretch the canvas on spare stretchers I had. These were then gessoed initially with transparent gesso, but then I decided to add a white wash to them (Cy Twombly reference). I will bring down the colour with the watered down white gesso by adding a few more layers. Then when dry, paint or draw onto the surface with Tacita Dean’s ‘mistakes/crossings out/markers’ reference in mind.

Phase One:

Phase two: