Colorado Snow Effect 6 (2008/2025)
Archival pigment inkjet print on Hahnemühle Photorag paper (308gsm).
30cm x 40cm / 15.75” x 11.81” (16” x 12”). (Standard frame sizes).
Edition of 256
£80 (+shipping)
The print number (n/256) is printed in the bottom right corner.
A certificate of authenticity accompanies the print.
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Colorado Snow Effect 6 (2008), oil on canvas, 137 x 183cm, was exhibited at Zürcher Studio, New York, in 2008.
As with the previous ‘snow effect’ paintings, the bottom half of this painting is made up of brightly coloured pixels that start to coalesce into greyscale from a long distance away (perhaps 15 meters). In contrast, the top half is painted in black & white, following a two-tone digital bitmap of the snowy scene.
The mirrored reflection is half the resolution of the trees above, so crudely simulates a slight lack of definition due to the watery lake surface. As the painting is approached, the relationship between the cold wintery landscape above and the warmly vibrant reflection becomes increasingly confused. The future promise of Spring - of life reawakening - is offered by the unfrozen water, coloured oil paint daubs, and shimmering pixels.
Indeed, this painting inspired the screen print Spring Snow (2009), which scattered the lake surface into cyan, magenta and yellow dots in a receding perspective, playing with the half-tone screen patterns that are particular to that print medium.
For this digital print from a photograph of the painting, the size has been carefully chosen so that the textures and imperfections of the canvas and brushstrokes are visible close-up while the picture starts to look black & white from 3-4 meters away (closer with squinted eyes). The ultimate aim is for the viewer to appreciate the romantic landscape scene (lake reflections being a classic) as they question the verity of what they are looking at.
The print number is printed light grey in the bottom right-hand corner - not to distract from the image. I decided not to print my signature bottom left as the image functions as the signature (and it just seemed a bit gauche as I only sign my paintings on the back). The certificate of authenticity will contain a printed signature.
Detail of the print
Unique edition number (n/256) printed small and faint in the bottom-right corner
Test print next to a chair for a sense of scale
Failing Light - Exhibition at Zürcher Studio, New York, 2008
In 2008 I had commenced my PhD, Screen as Landsacpe, at Kingston University. I wrote about the Colorado Snow Effect series in my initial monitoring report in 2009:
More recent painting experiments are collectively titled Colorado Snow Effects, and tackle a visual conundrum. Snowscapes are black and white, or at least the absence of colour, so long as the sky is grey, is not immediately apparent in many cases. In these works the snowy scene is depicted with pixels of pure saturated colour. From a long distance these points of colour optically merge and form a grey-scale image, revealing the subtle tones required to appreciate the forms of pine trees or line of a hillside. At close range colour perception takes over and the impression is one of abstracted coloured noise. These paintings play with ideas of the white noise between TV channels; with landscape as background and background radiation; and with paying perverted and futile homage to the use of additive colour implemented by Impressionism and Pointillism. Whereas the intentions of these movements was to emulate the immediacy of atmospheric scintillation, representing a ‘natural’ impression of a scene bathed in light, the use of pure colour to represent a grey landscape seems a ridiculous optical overindulgence; the metaphorical connections between snow, whiteness, silence and purity are subverted through the pathos of exuberant, noisy colour.