Ice painting: Billy Styles
ice painting
I am an experimental event colourist, using traditional components such as oils, acrylics and canvas, manipulating them in interesting and experimental ways. Actual movement of paint and colour interaction rather than depiction plays a major part in my creativity, with the movement being supplied through naturally occurring energy systems.
One such project is “Ice Painting” and involves moulding ice bowls, positioning them on canvas, then filling them with different types of paint, oil based, water based, or different consistencies. When the ice melts, the nature of the paint and positioning of bowls determines the type of colour interaction in different places.
This project takes a huge amount of patience and experimentation, because a learned process has to be gradually obtained, together with an acceptance of the “happy mistake” of random movement. This patience is mirrored in the viewing of the event where careful attention needs to be paid to catch the escaping paint spiralling out of tiny the gaps created when water freezes.
If you wait, you can then see the resulting naturally beautiful luscious colour interactions that follow. All this happens over a long period of time, and really makes the viewer aware of the passing time. This piece can be reflected into how people observe the world around them, and how they themselves interact with others, as if they were a colour in the installation.
Billy Styles
www.billystyles.co.uk
