I was recently asked by a client to reach out to Joshua Flint about his works on paper and what inspires them. Here is his response:
This series of acrylic ink paintings utilizes the synergy between acrylic ink and paper to render mysterious and fantastical worlds much like my oil paintings. In each piece I was after an expansive environment with a sense of complexity and distance, which is often only conceived of in larger works. Could this be contained within the intimacy of a small format, a format designed to bring a viewer in close? That was the question I had when I began. This was also my first time working with acrylic ink, so there was another question around how to handle the media alongside the conceptual elements.
What I discovered was that using a quality archival paper in tandem with the acrylic inks were the important ingredients to develop such qualities. I found I could adjust the ink through wet and dry applications allowing a range of thin and thick passages. The white of the paper was key to establishing brilliant color since it shines through those thinner layers. This variety of translucency and opacity was key to developing a believable environment that felt expansive. ‘Between us and the sunset’ and ‘The River listens’ are good examples displaying those translucent and fluid qualities where spaces connect and merge together. A sense of distance is important since it provides the room for populating the landscapes with all manner of figures and objects, formulating the complexity I was after. Soft edges meeting firm edges inform the viewer about depth from foreground to background. The dance between edges was a constant.
In addition, the paper could handle lifting or subtracting color in a more controlled manner than realized. I could be less delicate than I had originally thought. There are areas where I could scrub out or alter the applied color to refine an object that wasn’t quite resolved. ‘Centuries of June’ contains numerous spots where this was the only way to achieve the desired outcome. The purple-red wall with the Caravaggio painting and across the rows of bee hives are two locations where I was tough on the paper. This technique opened up each painting, providing more freedom to experiment. It was a discovery that offered me the ability to render objects and the landscapes more confidently, while also being mindful of finding unexpected applications or mark making, where I use various tools and methods to apply the paint. All this culminated in an image quality I couldn’t have anticipated.
To cement objects in place I built opacity through multiple layers. This can be seen in ‘The Chemistry of Atmosphere.’ Solid, realized paint interspersed against the thinner sections imbue the piece with a kind of suspended reality that I really enjoy. The juxtapositions of material usage aligned with the conceptual framework brought these paintings into the memory laden and dream like place characteristic of my work. - Joshua Flint
