Gallery

Oil painting with a palette knife, of an abstract kind, composed of multiple layers.

Depending on the use of the knife, you get more or less hard effects, and according to the siccative value and the time reserved between two layers, we work on blending or highlights.

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Various oils (poppy-seed oil, refined flax, ultra refined linen, safflower, stand oil, walnuts) allow a distribution of pigments depending on the density. Binders and varnishes offer this painting a great luminosity and depth.

The effects of textures are obtained by successive application of layer, juice, glaze and velatures.

The pigments are processed to lighten or dull them depending on their complementary colour or chromatic mid-tones.

The linen canvases are coated with layers of twilled gesso.

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With this mental technique of painting, composition rules of the classical tradition (the rule of the three planes, the geometric system of proportions, the direction of light, the points and lines of force,  the golden ratio, gate of harmony rules) are broken or thwarted without creating an imbalance of the whole.

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The pigments are subjected to conditions that test their textures and colours and deflect their effects. And when they break, they offer an unexpected wealth. For example, gold is opaque, milk-like, while ochre (in principle much duller) is enhanced to obtain superior light. Sepia pigment superimposed on a copper stain will produce warm grey effects. Yellow March worked on light backgrounds in glaze, with umber and Cassel brown highlights, collects light. The effects of depths of red ochre, burnt umber, red March pigments are tested by their juice in a complementary colour.

Rich effects consist of stains ranging from lean to fat and whose last layer is done with "alla-prima". The dark highlights are spread as coal and the light ones as chalk.

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The Courtrai drier is used only to obtain cracking effects.

Each canvas is covered with a retouching varnish then with a protective varnish, painted with a brush. These paintings get their final effect after a minimum of two years of siccativation. Oil oxidation congeals slowly.

I am only giving you a few basics here, because the intimacy of this painting compels me to keep it secret.