I have been painting a tree this week by only painting the negative spaces in shades of red. I chose red because the exhibition that this picture is intended for celebrates Turner, the artist and his work in the Tamar Valley. A big subject that I could easily have got lost in.

Turner, famously finished one of his great pictures, on Varnishing Day at the Royal Academy by planting a red blob on his misty grey seascape .

His great rival, Constable, saw this as an act of aggression as Constable often wove some red into his deeply rural landscapes.

An homage to an artists work is a big subject that I could easily get lost in so I have decided to reverse engineer the two things  he made famous; mists and red blobs.

Painting a tree using only red blobs looks uncannily like the histology slides used by pathologists to diagnose disease processes using tiny segments of tissue and a microscope. I have a few months to work on this technique but early results are looking interesting. After I have printed the actual tree skeleton over the blob painting. More stages to go.

Mists are also going to be reverse-engineered and dreadful flat, grey seascapes will be turned into colourful images that hint at rain and mist.

A lot to think about. This weekend I came out with a real arty response to the question,

” Where are you and what are you up to?”

“I am in the studio, considering my negative spaces”