Full Colour Maindee Festival

How abstract painting inspired how I painted a mural for Full Colour Maindee Festival - the first street art festival of its kind in Maindee, Newport.
I was invited by Andy O'Rourke to take part back in July - he'd only seen my flower paintings up until that point - however, since May, I've been developing my art practice - taking clues from the parts that I liked in #FlowerPowers to create a new body of work, in a completely new approach.

The approach is inspired by abstract expressionist painting, a process of 'way-finding' - responding to marks, shapes and colours on the surface without having a definite plan. Some would find this process anxiety-inducing and difficult - it isn't easy - but the more I do it, the more I love it.
It's a way of trusting intuition, trusting my choices, being playful and finding my way as I go. It can be uncertain and uncomfortable, yet the beauty of using opaque, masonry paint allows for 'mistakes' (there aren't any) to be covered up and allows starting again - the result is much richer as a result.

I was initially apprehensive to paint on such an uneven surface - the way that paint has to be applied to it (an intense, punching motion in contrast to smoothing or spraying paint onto it) is alien to everything I had been doing up to that point. Yet, if an artist can remain open to the possibilities of the materials showing the way - a way to do it emerges. In fact, the rough surface created small raised dots of colour which provided unexpected optical mixes. This experience has opened up other possibilities for me - I would love to do more: to provide a service for interior spaces perhaps.

With thanks to Andy for his mentoring within this process (it's been the first mural I've painted in years) for giving me a brief which gave me space to interpret in any way I wanted), and to everyone at Full Colour Maindee for organising such a brilliant event for the community. It brought everyone together, and a perfect way to meet new people - and feel proud to be part of this creative community. Here's to the next one!

#muralpainting #mural #abstractpainting #interiors #commission