Halo 21.04.23

"In college, I worked from the model, life drawing, life painting. Paintings of figures suspended in space evolved into paintings of form and space. I was splashing, pouring, dripping, splodging paint, working to create natural organic environments. I juxtaposed these with mechanical machine parts and metallic circuit boards. One day I painted a small Buddha floating cross-legged in the centre of a canvas; the next day I over painted with a circle. I stopped painting machine parts and focussed on simple geometric and natural forms.

After college in 2003, my studio was based in 11A, a multicultural arts and music recording studio in Gloucester city centre. I had recently purchased my first computer, digital camera and was playing with 3D modeling programs and airbrushing 'liquid metal' planes. But the computer model paintings were taking a long time and I had a show fast-approaching.

Loud guitars from the recording booth below vibrated old wooden floorboards which in turn rippled water in a bucket… I watched and imagined paintings of giant liquid speakers. I ordered two stretcher frames for the largest ‘widescreen’ canvasses that I could fit in and out of my studio and spent a week photographing ripples in the bucket. I started airbrushing a dark circular point with ripples emanating from the centre, but the format felt weak on the wide stretcher. I airbrushed for a couple of weeks and slowly evolved the composition to an oval format that worked with the dimensions of the canvas and simplified the ripples to a single glowing line. I had found my format for the show.

While painting these 'Focus' paintings, I wondered about spinning the canvas (instead of me dancing and swinging my arms around). My father found an office chair in a charity store; I broke off the seat, bolted the base to the wall, attached a canvas and set it spinning. At first, I experimented with pullies and weights, but quickly moved to an electric motor and started spinning at speed. The oval 'Focus' paintings evolved into circular colour 'Node' paintings and 'Ohm' Halo paintings.

In Autumn 2004 I moved from 11A to a quiet farm studio next to Splatt bridge on the Gloucester & Sharpness canal. I was training for a half marathon and spent hours running along the canal watching light play on the water, evening mists and sunsets. I love the restless expressive nature of water and how it makes energies visible. I worked to capture the visual tension between the light reflecting on the surface and the depths below. Over a two-year period I swapped airbrush and acrylics for oil paint and hog bristle brushes, and created the Harmonic paintings exhibited in 'Visual Harmonics' at the Fine Art Society, London 2007."

-Oliver Marsden