Marvelous Mistakes

Have you ever created a disaster? I have…often. Here’s one of them that I ended up liking. It began as an experiment using acrylic paint and alcohol inks. This was a very loose application tipping and dribbling and guiding rivulets of colour on box canvas. I left it to dry and was horrified after several days to see the effect of mixing alcohol ink with acrylic paint. Fissured in a big way! I was sure I’d be tossing it.

After a couple of weeks, I looked at this painting again and instead of disillusionment, I started to like the very aspects of it that had felt like failures before. I began to notice patterns. Inspired by the orange tones in one corner, I cast out a net of copper paint and accentuated some of the fissures with colours. The composition started to flow, expressing something of itself and I simply followed it’s lead. It earned it’s title: “Fissure”. I hope you’ll give disasters another chance and have some fun into the bargain too!