Laser cutting

So, the final decision was to have my pieces painted onto circular boards. A hard surface with weight to it for the hanging, which could easily be laser-cut into the right shapes and sizes. MDF. Yes.

After speaking to my tutor about it she advised me to talk to a specialist and I sent her an e-mail as soon as I could. After not receiving an answer for about four days, I got quite worried, as I needed the time after to prep and paint the boards. It was nearly a full week before I was induced in the magic of laser-cutting. I managed to fit all the circles onto 3 thin MDF boards and so create the platforms for my final pieces.

Because of the restrictions and considerations of the laser, the hanging holes which I hoped to be quite thin, had to be a lot wider which I wasn’t too pleased with. The other thing was that since I wanted my pieces hanging without turning, I had to have two holes on each. It was either that or getting perspex sticks which I didn’t want to do for it would have taken away the floaty bubble idea.

Finally after almost a full day sorting that out in uni, I was ready to get to work and star painting.

Finally painting

finally finally finally!!!

I started painting my final pieces, after a wait that just felt like a small eternity. Annoyingly enough, I had to first prime the boards, so I can paint them without damaging the wood – that was resolved by a quick solution of watered down PVA from a massive tube in the studio. Next up was the black base – now that was tricky because I was running very low on black acrylic and I didn’t have money for supplies at the time. I had to turn to my friend in Fine Art, Arthur Jarvis, whose work pretty much focuses on dark and sticky substances and for it he uses a lot of black paint. Fortunately he had some left, which I thought would run out quite quickly but miraculously covered all the boards and there was even some left to spare.

After having experimented with wet on wet painting I started thinking of how to do it well with acrylic. The process of making the Space piece and the Cosmic Tree piece was the most satisfying experience – watching mesmerised as the paint flows through the watery layer, plays, settles, moves, swirls and makes unexpected shapes and mixtures. Such things cannot be achieved by the human hand but only induced by it and I liked having that idea add to my work.