Sand Paintings

These paintings were the progression on from the earlier war paintings, I went for a more abstract approach then the horrific subject matter of napalm burn victims. I painted these on the flat with watered down acrylic (because drying times). They were done without the use of brushes except for the details, sand was spread in areas and then the acrylic was poured over it so the pigment would mass up against the grains of sand when dried. I put down cling film in areas and a heavy plastic sheet was layered over the paintings when they were drying, leaving folds similar to the folds in a map. En-caustic wax and brush work finished of the details.
Shame these are such bad photos, I'll need to take new ones when I get back to Ireland.

'keep the home fires burning'

'still sipping from the river lethe'

'misguided'

'war games'

Digging up the old crap

now I have to buy a hat, bloody tigers!

'Naplam VC' part of my research into the photography of the vietnam war

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The above painting was made with an old oil we found in an abandoned jail (that's another story:)) this forementioned oil never dried, so it was perfect for the effect I wanted for the skinn areas. I was mixed with convetional oil paint which I coated with Acrylic so it skinned dried but left it squissy to the touch. I unfortunately burst after I set fire to the painting.

Another painting based  on the vietnam war where I used the above technique for the skin and hung the painting on it side so the lips sagged away from the teeth. Its was later buried for a few weeks and then dug up again where worms ate parts of the canvas.

The later two paintings were based on my discertation about the photographers doing horrific acts themselves while trying to convey the horrors of the vietnam war. The act of myself making these painting was to retrace their steps in making compostional pleasing work with a juxtoposed subject matter. I never used these either.