Fish Food

How making 3D birds led to my new collection of paintings, called ‘Swim’. 

(Read Part 1 of this saga first! It’s called ‘Bird Boxes’.)

Part Two

Of course, I didn’t want to buy more boxes. Using up the boxes had been a starting point of the birds, and although I do enjoy a good chuckle at my own expense, buying more boxes seemed to be more extra than even I could countenance.

So life went on, and the few remaining paper birds in my studio whirled about over my head, witnessing illustrations, drawings, paintings, a pandemic. I kept gazing at them and enjoying the memory of those crazy, beautiful accidents of good creative fortune. Musing on how the serendipity in the work can flow when you let go of the control.

The painting didn’t work 100%, but it subliminally inspired an outfit, so that’s a win.

One day, I was doodling about on a canvas with some paint (above). It wasn’t really working, so in the end, I grabbed the biggest pot of paint I have, an ultramarine blue, and painted over big portions of the canvas leaving little segments of the first painting.

One Colour Resurrection being resurrected. No canvas was harmed in the making of this painting.

I didn’t think. I just painted.

It looked amazing. And I put the brush down, and called it done  – you can buy it here. I named it ‘One Colour Resurrection’.

You can actually hang this painting whichever way up you like.

With an idea brewing, I reached for a bigger canvas. I have kept a metre wide canvas as a sort of sketchbook for painting for a little while now. It’s really fun to hoist it onto the easel and let rip. It gives me ideas, and it doesn’t matter if the resulting whole is jangly and un-co-ordinated. It’s just for practice; a thought process, if you like. 

 I mixed some smudgey neutral colour and painted over it all, leaving a few flashes of the colours beneath, like in the following photo.

She’s on to something, can you tell :)

Wow, said the cat, watching from the windowsill. This is going to work.

I considered it. The random colours underneath, framed suddenly by the foreground, were not jangly at all. They were now most pleasing, and serendipity had made some of them look like fish, with patterns that swept from mouth to tail fin in lovely, fishy stripes.

Fish! Wow.

It was the same feeling of magical chance, but this time in paint, not cut paper – that the birds had had.

Look at those textures. They are made not with human hand, but with magic.

I love painting - the physicality of it, the smell of the paint, everything. It’s like a dance.

Ooh, said the cat.

Do you think? said I. 

Yes, said the cat, and she settled down to watch on the cosy chair opposite my easel. 

Everyone knows you don’t mess with the opinion of a cat, and cats do have particularly strong opinions about fish. So that was that, I started to paint.

The thing that I love, is that I couldn’t paint the patterns on the fish if I tried. They just become when I let the process take over. It’s scary, but the reward is fantastic.

It’s a risky business. To make these paintings, I have to first make an abstract painting, and then effectively destroy it with the foreground. But you know what? You’re worth it, and so am I.

Playing is everything.

It raises the bar.

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And that is the true story of how my fish paintings came to be. If you would like to buy one, you can do so here.