Original artwork description:

American artist Robert Bissett once said 'a painting is a series of corrected mistakes' but American artist Bob Ross once said there are no mistakes in art just 'happy accidents.' So all in all it is pretty hard to know what the hell is going on. Whoever's philosophy you adhere to a painting is not an immaculate conception; it doesn't just appear out of nowhere like the image of Christ on the Shroud of Turin. I cling to the vague hope that, like the honest toil of a accountant or a binman, even Botticelli found that painting The Birth of Venus was a frustrating, error-strewn drudge, which occasionally he wanted to stick his boot through.

Beyond some vague idea of what a painting is about, I never plan it out in advance. I don't do rough drafts. I know my limitations and I work around that. But you could fashion only a very small one-person tent out of the number of canvasses I have painted over because I found the end result an eyesore. This painting of the exploding TV was not error free. Initially there were a lot more of the visual pyrotechnics emanating from the TV. But the result was too busy. Believe it or not the color volume knob got turned right down. The black and white interference across the centre of the screen was applied with the rough side of a pan scrubber - equipment I didn't train on at the art school I didn't go to. So this was a hurdle to be crossed. But the biggest mistake with the picture was with the colorful innards seeping out of the TV's speakers at the bottom of the picture. It wasn't so much a technical error but more matter of aesthetics. Originally the colors spewing out of the TV were painted realistically - the colors had depth, highlights, shading. I Googled 'spilled paint' to get the idea. It looked OK but it wasn't the point. The TV had to look real - but everything coming out of it had to look .... er...not real. Everyone knows that what's on TV is fake. The intestines spewing out had to be phony. So the fancy pants paint effects got ditched and all the effluence cascading from the device was painted totally flat, with no contrast at all, apart from the droplets dripping off the edge of the frame at the bottom, which have escaped from the picture into the real world.

To the casual observer these pathetic justifications will sound like the pretentious guff of a pompous artist rationalizing his/her vainglorious creation as if it were somehow 'high art,' whereas it is just a bit of colorful cloth to brighten up that vertical desert above the sofa. An accountant or a binman would never pontificate at a dinner party about the minutiae of their jobs so why would an artist? Another American artist, Andy Warhol, once said: 'Why do people think artists are so special, it's just another job'. So this is just 'another job' that is riddled with mistakes and happy accidents. For the purpose of this particular painting let's call them temporary faults.


Limited Edition Prints.
Printed on William Turner Hahnemuhle fine art exhibition quality paper (310 g/m2) using Epson Ultrachrome Pro Pigments, the colours remain true to the original up to 100 years.
The image size is 45×30 cms and there is an additional 3 cms border all the way round the image (ie total size: 51×36 cms). The artist will sign and number the print in this border. The print is unframed.
Prints will leave the artists studio within 7 days, rolled in a heavy tube, accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity and sent via track and trace


UK Buyers Please Note: Since 1st Jan 2021 additional import taxes are being levied. In theory artworks should attract no more than a 5% charge but it seems to depend on the courier and could be more.

Materials used:

Acrylics

Tags: