Story behind the work: ‘Tilting Ocean’ and ‘On top of the World’
ABOVE LEFT: ‘Tilting Ocean’. 2021. Oil on oil paper.
ABOVE RIGHT: ‘On top of the world.’ 2021. Oil on oil paper.
‘Tilting Ocean’ was painted before ‘On top of the world’ and was painted in a stream of consciousness approach. The outlines were created in Indian Ink, colours were added one by one in oil paints (some areas were painted over if the choice didn’t work compositionally when other colours were added) and then the outline was cleaned up again mostly with Quinacridone Magenta pigment.
ABOVE: Process photographs of ‘Tilting Ocean’ with a photograph far right of both ‘Tilting Ocean’ and ‘On top of the world’ on the easels.
I love exploring new ideas and with this painting during the process I wondered what I could add that could make it different to other works I had created before. In that moment I thought that it could be nice to have the horizon line tilting at an angle to break up the composition which looked quite rectangular due to the angular positioning of her legs sitting parallel to the straight straight edges of the paper. As soon as I placed the tilting horizon line I suddenly wished I had more room to paint as I had this idea of the ocean tipping off a cliff and the water falling into space.
ABOVE: Stages of creating ‘On Top of the world’. I loosely knew what I wanted to create with this painting so started in pencil.
I really wanted to try this idea of an ocean tipping into space so ‘On top of the world’ was painted straight after. In ‘On top of the world’ a woman sit upon a slab of gold that holds a sea of water. The platform tips and drips the water into space. The gold slab rests on Earth-like planet. A blue rose emerges from her back like wings. The blue rose balances out the composition of the blue dripping water and adds an additional surreal element as the blue flower itself ‘drips’ and becomes the water filling the ocean.
Both these paintings have a surreal element which sparks the imagination and both celebrate creativity by playing with form, shape and colour freely borrowing traditions from Cubism and Abstraction. Both paintings are celebrations of individualistic strong women.
