Transcript of the audio resource
The painting in front of you is made using acrylic paint and oil pens on a wooden plaque, measuring 30cm wide, 22.5cm high and 1.5cm deep. The edges of the plaque are bevelled and painted black.
The painting is abstract, made up of many colourful layers, and across the middle is a band of white with cursive black letters spelling out the phrase “Spend more time outside”.
The main colour in this painting is pink, which covers the whole background. The top of the plaque is a bolder fuchsia pink, with paler pinks swirling into it, gradually getting lighter towards the bottom of the painting. This whole background is covered in black paint splats and dots.
The rest of the painting focuses across the middle of the plaque, building up layers behind that white banner with the wording on it. First there is a black section, with visible brush strokes and large orange loops - which gives a sense of speed and movement to the piece. Next are large blobs of a pale minty blue, with smaller lime green blobs inside each of them, and a black dot inside the green. These are bursting out from the middle towards the edges of the canvas. Surrounding them are paint splatters in the same blue and green.
The final layer is a peach banner, with the white band featuring the lettering on top of it - this band is crisp and clean in contrast to the rest of the painting, allowing the words to really stand out.
Keep listening to hear more about the painting in front of you.
This piece was made with Shauna, her favourite place is the bandstand in Ynysangharad park and her words of wisdom are “Spend more time outside”.
Shauna: “Because I suffer with four lots of epilepsy, my mind is a bit younger than what I am. Nature is one of the main parts of where I like to be. With the parks, listening to the sounds and the birds.”
Shauna talked about the simple pleasure of sitting in the park with her partner and friends, enjoying the sounds of the squirrels in the trees, and the bees and butterflies bobbing around between the flowers. Just listening to her talk about it made me feel relaxed.
Her favourite colours are black and pink, which I’ve included in this painting. To guide myself in the making of these artworks I came up with a colour language, I looked into the historic and cultural meanings behind colours and created my own colour guide to use. Using this language I have added in greens to represent Shauna’s love of the outdoors, and orange to symbolise her relationships. The way I have painted her plaque mirrors the movements she discussed… the blue and green blobs mimic the floating, hovering of the butterflies, and the swooping almost never ending energy of bees is shown in the orange loops that seem to never end as they pass back and forth across the painting.
Shauna talked about how lockdown has stopped her being able to get outside and enjoy being in nature, and how she’s looking forward to making up for lost time.