Art and Science=The Microscope
I was so fortunate to receive some funding from Leeds University and after some (I lie, A LOT of) research, I bought myself a microscope. I knew that I would be working straight from what I saw from under the microscope so I wanted ‘something’ to enable me to look at the water samples on my laptop screen. As an abstract painter, I always use photography as the first source of investigation so this was key for me. I found out that I needed a photomicrographic camera lens!!! So, after I purchased the microscope and the lens, I now had to teach myself how to use it and let me tell you, this was no easy task and still isn’t tbh. I really want to have some kind of mentoring going forward but that’s another conversation for further down the blog.
After many, many attempts of turning nobs, lens, switches etc. I managed it- I managed to see something!!! So, my microscope has three lens, 10 x, 40 x and 100 x and it is just amazing to see what lives in the water and moving!!! Below are some of the first images I got- don’t ask me what they mean or what they are (another question for another day) but what I thought was amazing was that everything was green and purple. Funnily, Ciarán said, that the green diesel was made up of components with the main colours being green and purple- so maybe I was on the right road…
Looking back at these samples now, I can see how basic they are. It took me sooooo long to get the samples in focus and sometimes when I had a great image, the contents just swam away!!! My head was wrecked plus I was getting this halo of light from inside the lens that I couldn’t get rid of. My aim is to go back and get some more samples now that I have a better understanding of the microscope and I don’t want to chuck it into the tide!!!
Anyhoooo, once I had something concrete to work from and visually translate, that was me back in the studio. If you know me and my work, it takes a lot of stages before I actually put paint on canvas and these are the stages I love as you have complete abandonment and you just need to trust the process. These are the stages where I work out colour, shape, form and placement-in other words- mark making and having fun!!!!
My initial thoughts were ‘ink’ and so that’s what I did. I spent months and months experimenting with different qualities and colours of inks on different grades and thickness of papers from the cheapest, free wax paper that I had stashed in my studio right up to the ‘magnifique’ Saunders Waterford Watercolour Paper. Some papers took to the inks better so it was very much trial and error tbh but I kept every bit and decided then, I needed to experiment even more!!!!
