New Substrate

The wonderful team at the Esk Garden Fair asked, 'are you interested in a painting a live grass mural for the festival this year?'

My initial response was, 'yes', quickly followed by 'how does one paint grass?' Never to back down from an interesting challege I started investigating. Findly quickly this wasn't a medium artists were regularly engaging with, so I went to my next best option and started exploring the world of sport...in particular field painting. 

WOW let's actually give a round of applause for the field painting industry, this was certainly not easy, even though it was fun. 

The next step was to practice, and thankfully my parents were happy to donate a patch on their farm for me to do so. It was all about learning the materials. How far to spray from the grass, what ratios of the paint worked best? Playing with angles and designs. Learning the movements of my body, tranisitioning the smaller wrist flicks into whole arm swings. It was a problem-solving adventure. Let alone thinking what I would physically look like in the process, because this was in itself a performance as much as an artwork. Im sorry for those that caught me stretched out or hunched over sometimes making the best design took precident over creating an aesthetic photo opportunity for people. 

The result was a growing design starting from the centre and expanding outwards. The day was beautiful, the conversations were rich and by the end I had aches and pains in parts of my body I had yet to experience. 

But would I do it all over again....for sure!