Project 7; Paint In The Style Of Another Artist

John Piper has interested me since the Autumn project for the course "Relating to Other Artists" and I've continued to do research into his work. Seeing one of his paintings on display in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff recently was interesting in order to see how he used texture and layering to achieve his dramatic effects. I've also been reading the book "Lives in Art" by Frances Spalding which chronicles the lives of husband and wife team John and Myfanwy Piper. The book goes into quite a bit of detail behind the techniques that John used, especially the use of thick gesso paint in the background and also the way he would scrape into the paint. The website johnpiper.org.uk gives information that John wouldn't actually have painted the oil paintings outside, as he felt the equipment needed to create these paintings was just too cumbersome, but he did many watercolour paintings on site and would accompany this with pages and pages of written information on tonal properties and colours.

Using this information and the images featured in the book and the website I decided to create my own John Piperesque painting for the project "In the style of...", using as my subject matter a chapel which burned down a few years ago. I'd painted the chapel in its whole state for the Watercolour course five years ago so I found the idea of treating it in a different style to be interesting and challenging.

I spent many pages researching and recreating images by John Piper incorporating his dramatic colour schemes, then went on to experiment with my compositions for the chapel using different viewpoints, and then proceeded to start the final painting. I wanted to use oils, as John would have done, but felt that painting with acrylics as an undercoat would allow me greater flexibility with time seeing as thick layers of oil paint would be used and I couldn't wait too long before posting it off to my tutor.

Whilst laying down the initial layer of acrylic paint, using an old palette with dried on paint, I came up with the idea that rather than scraping off the old acrylic from the palette and throwing it in the bin, I would use it to thicken up the background for the painting, which would then create the opportunity for interesting paint textures for the oils on top. The two photo's above show the end result of the base layer of acrylic, incorporating the thick dried chunks of acrylic. At this moment in time I'm still unsure if it's going to work though, I'll either live to regret it or decide that it was well worth it. For now I see it as an interesting effect and I'm willing to give it a go.