23/11/2025
Another magical living painting 🤪🤪😲😲🤔🤔😆❤️.
I didn't paint the blurry area around the red section of this landscape: it mysteriously appeared after the picture had been hanging in the gallery for about a month 😲.
The explanation? I think I understand now, but it's only my opinion ➡️
Every now and again an earth pigment tricks you and picks up moisture from the atmosphere at certain levels of humidity. Depending on the nature of the pigment adjacent to the absorbent one, the moisture can leak out into the surrounding colour. The funny thing is that once the level of humidity drops, the painting goes back to normal 😆😯.
And the crucial factor? Salt.
Over the journey I've learnt that the moisture-attracting pigments are always from areas where there's a lot of salt in the environment, eg beaches, or formerly submerged inland areas. In this particular case, the fabulous red colour was from the pindan cliffs at the beach at James Price Point in the north-west of WA (a small amount was brought back for me by Toora local and good friend Vanessa McCoach ❤️). The white colour I call Dan Leno after a man who lived in the area on our farm where I find it.
It's interesting that only the water ever leaches out: the colour never does.
This phenomenon occurs only rarely. Of the hundred or so colours I've collected and worked with, only two or three have this property.
Can the picture be stabilised 🤔? Yes ✅️. We rarely put protective coatings on our paintigs as we feel a shiny surface is at odds with the intrinsic nature of the medium we work in, but I've learnt through experimentation that a clear coat added to the canvas when the atmosphere is dry can do the trick. I always sell these paintings on the understanding that if the phenomenon re-occurs and bothers the purchaser , a full refund is available 😉.
