Notes on Paintings

It’s a question I am asked regularly: How is the work made? 
The answer I’m now giving is this;  
I have spent many years inventing and discovering new painting techniques.  It’s a continual process.  I will write a book before I die outlining the techniques I use and then share it all with you then.  Suffice to say for the moment, my education in art has been of a classical nature and I have learnt the rules before bending them.  My approach to materials is international.  If the canvas is better made in Australia, I use it, if the pigments are better in France, I use it, etc.  A work of art is an investment for a buyer, not just in taste, but also in the expectation that the work they have purchased will continue to look amazing for a very long time.  I respect this very much and when I buy a piece of art, expect that the artists has the same ethic.  

Holographic Paintings are painted with a brush and multiple techniques with often over 40 layers of work to achieve the effect.  The viewer sees different impressions of the painting as a function of lighting and positional changes.  Photographs represent a good approximation of the depth and shifts in the work, they are however, unable to give all that an original work emits. Works commonly take many months to make. Part of my technique is a balance of the use of 'open times' and 'drying stages' and this means I paint works concurrently.

Mixed Media works also have a three dimensional effect and depth of colour, often with colour shifts associated with viewer position changes. All works are of course made by hand.  They are not airbrushed nor made by throwing colour at the canvas nor made as a chemical accident mixed like a cake! (It’s always such a pleasure to listen to the experts explaining how my work is made.) Effectively for me technique  is not the actual point of the work.  Yes, the technique is new and my invention but the point of the work is the interior voyage it allows.  “Le Voyage Immobile”, as Pauline Seiller my gallerist in Saint Paul de Vence calls it, is something transmitted and experienced by resting with the finished work, in a contemplative state of mind.  


-Mesha-