I am delighted to be making seven large paintings for the Exchange Building in East London. Work began back in January on these canvases measuring 6ft x 4ft. I was really excited to be given this commission for such a prominent, residential building in Spitalfields.

Working on this large scale with acrylic inks has thrown up exciting new possibilities as well as new problems: how to push and pull large quantities of inks across a large canvas surface. I’ve had to be resourceful, using some unusual tools to apply inks. Interestingly, the most successful experiment lead me to using a variety of window cleaning squeegees. These wide spatulas have enabled me to apply the inks and move them around quickly, working them across a big surface area and allowing the ink to flow and stain the canvas before the inks dry. It feels a bit like working in watercolours, once an ink stain goes down it’s really irretrievable, so creating these paintings with certainty and confidence and purpose has been essential. It’s enabled deliberate, large scale mark making which has been really interesting.

Here are a few photos taken mostly at the paintings mid-way point. Some of the photos show close ups of individual paintings others the whole canvas. You can follow my progress here and in the next month i’ll be posting more photos of the works as they progress. Let me know what you think of them!