Exhibition now closed.
In the meantime you can find my work at the following galleries:
Bircham Gallery, Holt, Norfolk
21 works from my Saturn collection will be for sale from Friday at 1900 hrs GMT. This body of work is one of my most successful and longest standing collections to date, each piece being unique and a development of it’s predecessors.
Saturn and the NASA Connection
It was never my aim to create a body of work that related to a planet in our solar system, or space in any way for that matter. However, in 2019 I received a commission from Joanna Bird to create an artwork that represented space in some way for NASA, to be exhibited and auctioned at the 50th anniversary celebrations for the 1969 Apollo moon landing, at Kennedy Space Centre.
For this I created ‘Saturn Bowl’. The 5 colours in Saturn were derived from an image of Saturn seen through an infrared lens, showing colours the naked eye cannot see. Different colours indicate the layers and varying densities of cloud and haze, while the vibration of the narrow lines refer to the constantly moving small particles which make up the planets rings.
I have since developed this into a large collection, maintaining the colourway but varying the surface arrangement. Within the collection only 5 colours are used but 9 or more colours are visible. This is due to a phenomenon known as simultaneous contrast, where the eye sees different colours depending on the neighbouring hue. One of the strongest colour illusions is that of red juxtaposed with dark blue; the red is altered so much it appears as a bright fuschia pink. Another illusion, which I have noticed recently, is that a yellow band situated next to red, takes on a lime green hue. You can see this on on the foot of the larger spherical form in this exhibition, Saturn R3.
I hope you enjoy the exhibition, and your purchase if you are able to make one!
