Experimenting with new silks via the use of layering

Following on from my initial experimentations with the new silkscreen imagery as discussed in my previous post, I experimented with the same images but layering paint on top of the imagery once I had screen printed on top of the initial painting. Using the same colours that I had mixed whilst using the original photographs as a reference, I produced the following set of images:

 

My experimentation with layering was partially inspired by Gerhard Richter's late series of works from the mid 1970s onwards. Within these works, the paintings had become very blurred occasionally becoming entirely abstract. The form and the subject matter, begin to merge, the paint devouring the figuration inherent within the pieces.

Gerhard Richter, Abstract Painting, (809-3), 1994, oil on canvas.

 By the 80s Richter dragged squeegees across the surface of the paintings' creating an annihilation of the difference between marking and erasing, revealing and obscuring, creating and destroying. Richter's fascination is wedded to repetition, reproduction, and an interrogation of the act of looking and the technologies through which this takes place.

Gerhard Richter, Abstract Painting 809-1, 1994, oil on canvas.

Although these works functioned as an interesting experiment, I was not sure whether they were effective as final pieces. Although successful in parts the successive layers of paint applied to the canvas meant that the landscapes depicted were becoming progressively more and more abstract so as to be unrecognisable as a depiction of place. In the same way that my experimentation with the circular tondos had been beneficial, ultimately it did not effectively tie in with my research as the paintings were to far removed from the landscapes they were depicting. 

Similarly my use of colour did not correspond to the places that I was depicting. I wondered therefore whether in fact it would be more effective to subdue the colours and relate them much more closely to the colours within the original photographs that I had been referencing.