During the winter/spring lockdown 2021 my work based on pallet forms continued. Once a compilation of images had been gathered I decided to use up a concertina book & a pack of paints to make something in a way that I have never before, a colourful painted book work. At the outset the only thing I wanted to explore was colour. A departure to my usual practice where applied colour is minimal & focused. This departure was a call to welcome the colours of spring, make something that was not (intended) to be part of my main stream practice & explore painted texture.
While figuring out exactly what I was going to paint I arranged the 48 colours from the paint set into a rough spectrum to get an idea of the colours in an ordered way. As this work was to go in a concertina book I knew that viewing the whole zig zag of the pages at once was going to be an aim. This was preferable to turning it page by page & taking in one image at a time & one set of colours at a time. The traditional book format would only give bitesize pieces of information where I wanted the open up the experience of seeing a book work. The aspect of having the full length on show at once means that colour can be seen from any angle while viewing the extended pages of the book.
With this in mind I decided to use a template & roller to add colour onto the outer edge of the pages. On the left pages colour was applied from the darkest end of the spectrum & on the right, the brightest colours were applied. This has created an effect, when looking at the length of the book, of the bright colours standing out against the darker ones. A surprise result of doing this has occurred where the colours illuminate the blank paper opposite. The concertina glows a faint colour spectrum as if the pages were gently washed in pigment.
With all of the edges painted there is an instant blast of colour that hopefully piques interest from further away, bringing attention to the detail within the pages.
