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Painting with found pigments

Finger-painted Garden    Oil on canvas 68 cm X 59 cm (2002)		Detail

The  painting "Dark Garden" is a rejection of the synthetic quality of acrylic,  encouraging me to make my own paint from stuff around the house: soot from the chimney, ash from the grate and garden bonfires, blended with PVA as a binder.  This paint is now steeped in personal association - but does have the drawback of changing colour and stinks as it dries. But soot proved an ideal medium to build up the tactile marks necessary for this current series.

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