I began with black and white transparencies that I had made from the poster photographs I have been working with. Then, inspired by Henri Matisse's cut-outs and Stephanie Richter's use of crumpled tracing paper, I layered the components in frames - transparency, cut-outs made from lighting gel and then crumpled 60-65gsm tracing paper.
I constructed them in frames so that they could stand with a light source behind them. I sat them on a window sill so that the natural light would come through but you could also use lighting such as LEDs in a gallery setting.
I didn't really set out to use a particular colour. The blue gel was the first sheet in a pack containing more than 20 colours but as it turned out the colour is similar to the blue used by Matisse in Blue Nude 1 (1952) and many other of his works. (see earlier inspiration post)
With regard to the shapes, I had analysed shapes used by Matisse and admired the round shapes used by Dirk Stewen. When it came to choosing shapes for my own artworks I didn't know what shape/s I wanted so I just picked up the gel and cut whatever came to mind. As it turned out my sources of inspiration seem to have influenced my scissors. I have ended up with:
- unevenly shaped strips of colour
- triangles of different dimensions
- circles
- positive shapes with matching negative shapes.
The edges varied - straight, curved, smooth and rough.
As I added the gel cut-outs I noticed the interesting effect created when two pieces of gel overlapped. I liked this and incorporated this happy discovery.
I also tried adding gel cut-outs on two earlier works. These works now have a double printed layer, then gel cut-outs and are topped with a transparency.
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