Brian West’s Artist Statement
I now always paint in oils and acrylics, using brush and knife in a range of textures from a thin brushed wash through to a heavy knifed impasto.
My application has developed over 35 years or so by mostly being more concerned with the loose application of positive colours rather than the clinical line and detailed illustrative precision. It has proved a steep learning curve attempting to impact an emotion in this way.
It may be that thinking positively can be self-inspiring enough to pursue a personal achievement or lasting contentment. The pliability and colour-fusion of painting in oils is therapeutic and challenging, the same process is easier applied but the end product harder to attain when using fast-drying acrylics – for unlike oils – it just refuses to be pushed around. It demands a kind of strata-painting in order to build up the same desired interference of tone and mark or ghosting effect – something I aspire to in trying to capture the emotion and colour of movement in its millisecond prime - a visually impossible surreal glimpse of a connection to a parallel universe of stillness in action. A bit obscure I know but I think that is the nearest I can get to explaining a modus operandi.
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