Sylvia's paintings
These are details of paintings based on drawings of orchids and their
environment done on location in various places. I have included a few
drawings as well.
- I have used a variety of styles and formal approaches playing with colour
and abstraction. In some the landscape is given prominence while in others
the patterns of the orchid's labellum are the focus of interest.
- The process is tightly controlled with micro-decisions being made at each
stage with random effects being generated as the stages build up into the
finished works.
- The approach references screen printing while giving evidence of the human
hand in the minute imperfections generated while working.
- The paintings of the orchid labellums show some of the amazing
multiplicity and variety of patterns within the species; they also
play with figure and ground in the opposite way to when looking at orchids
in a meadow - not being able to see some of the labellums at first
whereas in the wild we sometimes don't think that there are orchids in
a meadow and then seeing one see many more!
- I have used acrylic paints Acrylic Gel Medium to
give a high gloss which shows up in the original, though not on the web page.
The white orchids are painted using a mixture of white gouache with Iridescent
White acrylic - this is used for some of the backgrounds in the night-time
paintings. The gold backgrounds are Antique Gold acrylic.
- The copyright of
all the paintings and drawings is retained by Sylvia.
