Paula Dunn
I am fascinated by light, colours, textures and shades; I enjoy experimenting with techniques such as impasto, the use of palette knives, the application of glazes and most recently sfumato. My primary consideration when looking for an image to interpret is the effect of the colour, or the combinations of the colours within that image; I need to be attracted to the image, to have my imagination fired by what I see before I can determine how to realise it on canvas. To this end I tend to work in oils, building layer upon layer, to afford an almost textural quality to the finished piece. In all of my work the importance of light, how it falls on or across the subject, and the way this changes our perception of the subject, is one of the most essential elements of what I am trying to capture. My work breaks down loosely into three subject areas; landscapes, urbanscapes and seascapes. In each area I use similar techniques to try and bring out the beauty of a particular place or view that I feel can often be overlooked, or sometimes missed because of its familiarity.
Recently I have been experimenting with the different effects I can impose on a painting once the application of the oil to the canvas has been completed. The “Nightfall over the Hebrides ” series shows the results of layers of glaze laid over mainly abstract paintings. The colours are rendered hard, glass-like or ceramic while remaining vibrant. I feel it has, in these examples, given depth to the pictures and returned a luminosity to the scene that is often lost in reproductions. These nightfall paintings also help to illustrate another area of experimentation; the size of the finished piece. They are the smallest paintings I have yet produced for exhibition (12 x 17cm), while at the other end of the scale are a series of landscapes (150 x 91cm). In this series of larger landscapes, I have again tried to create different effects using different materials. I have dribbled the glazes through the colours to try and illustrate the feeling of melting insubstantiality of the massive terrain under the influence of elemental forces at work.
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