Downing Street
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Made with Love
Bold colours
If painting a room with opaque emulsion / latex paint it doesn’t have to be flat and monotone! In this room I applied the first coat with a large mineral brush covering all areas with the paint and brushing into the drying edges. After doing that, the room quite frankly looked terrible! But the secret is to soften it and this is done by diluting the second coat with acrylic medium and applying with a small brush. The result is a subtle two tone colour effect which is especially nice when strong bold colours are used.
Poet with a camera
Andre Kertesz (1894-1985)
‘Painting his Shadow’
Every human being is an artist…
“Every human being is an artist, a freedom being, called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and inform our lives.”
Joseph Beuys
Where’s my dog dish?
The Worshipful Company…
In England, very little is known of the painting trade prior to the 13th century. It was at this point when ‘guilds’ began to form (an association of artisans or merchants who controlled the practice of their craft in a particular town) and amongst them were the Painters Company and the Stainers Company. With the consent of the Lord Mayor of the City of London in 1502, the two guilds merged and became The Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers. The guild regulated the quality of the craft and acted as protector of the trades secrets. In 1606 Parliament granted a bill to enforce protection from outside competition such as plasterers. The Act legislated for a seven year apprenticeship and barred plasterers from painting. The enforcement of this Act was sought by The Worshipful Company until the 19th century.
Corridor transition
The painting of this corridor was part of a lazure workshop at Portland Waldorf School. The warm colours of the first grades transition to the greens and blues of early teenage years.
Ted Ochre
Red was your colour.
If not red, then white. But red
Was what you wrapped around you.
Blood-red. Was it blood?
Was it red-ochre, for warming the dead?
Haematite to make immortal
The precious heirloom bones, the family bones.
Extract from the poem ‘Red’ by Ted Hughes (married to Sylvia Plath when she committed suicide in 1963)
Haematite is an iron oxide and the name is derived from a Greek word meaning blood.
Ochre is clay that is coloured by varying amounts of haematite.
Kamala orange
Natural dyes are fluid substances extracted from colour-yielding plants that have been precipitated with aluminium oxide.
I’ve lazure painted two rooms with Artemis kamala orange and both of them look yellow.
