After the modelling phase was complete, I started to paint the figures…
Although now retired, at that time Rosi had been a Social Worker for many years. Her work was with the Sure Start project, which meant that she was meeting with people from different backgrounds on a daily basis. She has always been interested in art and design, and in recent years had been making coloured designs as a way of unwinding. To me, her designs seem to reflect the very idea of sociability, being of many coloured forms; and it was this aspect that interested me in choosing her designs to be translated to the sarongs worn by my figures. Not only are the figures indicative of singular under-standing (of which more later), but now their sarongs were able to hint at the infinity of environments within environments that constitute that under-standing.
I traced the outlines of Rosi’s designs and transferred these to the smoothly sanded surfaces of the figures…
And using acrylic paint, meticulously painted the sarongs…
The skins of the figures were also of many different colours. The processes of applying resin ‘musculature’ over the framework, followed by many, many adjustments and sandings, had left a very interesting colouration, not dissimilar to the veins in marble. So it was then just a matter of overlaying layers of coloured acrylic glazes.
