A triumph of drippy canvas and Victorian engravings.
I did a whole series of collages with drippy paint in the early 2000s, spraying diluted paint onto white canvases and letting it slowly drip down them as it dried. The results varied depending on the mix of colours and how diluted they were.
This piece, maybe more than any other, captures what I was trying to do with that style -the colour illuminates the engravings and gives them a super punchy crispness. Having a lighter colour at the bottom emphasises that too.
It’s also the perfect mix of serious and ridiculous in terms of the characters. All the source material I use for my black and white collage looks very posed and formal and serious, making it such fun to undermine that with silly heads and fishy gentlemen in a turbulent sea.