Description
Time on the Wall – a cream wall over a black band
Abstract painting renders almost the whole canvas as a smoothed cream and ivory plane and closes it along the lower edge with a narrow black band: painting on canvas built on a deliberately extreme proportion.
Technique and texture
The bright plane is built from several coats of dense plaster scratched back with a narrow tool once it had dried. The scores are shallow and irregular, so light breaks in them differently than it does on the smooth passages. The black band went on last and is the only place with a wet, flowing load.
The motif
The proportion is deliberate: the bright field takes four fifths of the canvas and the dark band one. Thin vertical scores run down across the light field from the top edge to the middle. Inside the dark strip, pale marks and brief trickles come up like light escaping under a wall. There is no shape anywhere, so what is left is texture and colour.
Setting and placement
There is no more neutral combination than cream and black, so this competes with nothing else in a room. Against a darker wall the bright plane behaves like an opening cut into it.
- Technique: hand-painted painting on canvas, several coats of dense plaster scratched back when dry, shallow irregular scores, wet flowing black band
- Palette: cream, ivory, black, white
- Ideal for: living rooms, hallways, working corners
- Character: minimal, textural, extreme
Choose the size that suits your wall.
