The Colour That Made Me Stay

Enchanted Spaces
Mixed media (oil on canvas), 2024
30 × 30 cm each

Across three panels, red forms surface against a dark ground at twilight, appearing briefly before dissolving back into depth.

This triptych unfolds across three interconnected twilight scenes, built through layered material and restrained revelation. Vibrant red forms emerge against a deep, dark ground, suggesting flowers without fixing them in name. Their colour appears briefly held between dusk and night, vivid yet unsettled. 

Each panel is constructed through a dense accumulation of sand, modelling paste, and paper collage, before being overlaid with a dark, transparent ground of oil paint and linseed oil. The surface is then partially wiped back, uncovering fragments of colour and form beneath. What remains visible is selectively revealed rather than fully exposed, creating a sense of emergence rather than depiction. 

Within this field, small presences appear: a bird perched high in one panel, a butterfly moving close to the red forms in another. These elements are not advanced as narrative, but remain quiet points of attention, briefly held within the larger field. Opaque oil paint is applied sparingly in the final stages to clarify grasses and floral shapes in the foreground, offering moments of focus within the surrounding depth. 

The three panels depend on one another, functioning as variations of a single condition rather than separate images. Colour, texture, and darkness move across the work in slow alignment, held just long enough to be noticed before slipping back into shadow.