Original artwork description:

“Lapis Lazuli“ is an acrylic study painting on 300gm canvas paper 20x29cms. It is set in an off-white card window mount 28x35cms and will fit into a standard frame made A4 images.
The painting is one of several studies made in preparation for a larger canvas painting.
The painting is inspired by a memory of seeing a “Dolly Blue” factory building whilst on a train journey sometime in the early 70’s. “Dolly Blue” was a detergent of laundry blue made in north-west England. I’ll not forget seeing the Dolly Blue factory from the train window. An austere building, a dark satanic place set in a green landscape with glowing cerulean blue walls. It was distinctly unnatural. It was a chemical intervention. Dolly Blue was manufactured near Backbarrow in Cumbria and the factory was known as the "dolly blue works". The rocks along the riverside there became covered with a fine, royal blue dust from the works. This synthetic product was initially made by grinding the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. Lapis lazuli is a deep-blue metamorphic rock used as a semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense colour.
The painting also takes inspiration from the poetry of Roy Harper and his epic masterpiece “One Of Those Days In England”
The painting is about time and memory. “Dolly blue rivers, foreverness givers …”
I build my paintings in layers of thin, transparent washes of colour combined with and overworked with impasto applications. I use brushes, knives and cloths. I let the paint take its own course. I like the process of painting, so I purposefully leave in the traces of its behaviour such as the marks of knife and brush and the stream and trickle of diluted pigment. I respect and work with the nature of paint.
The painting is shipped in a reinforced card envelope/folder and is cellophane wrapped.

Materials used:

Acrylic on 300gm canvas paper

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