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- Mary HIckey
Mary
HIckey
ACTIVITY
My inspiration comes from an attraction to and an interest in what is around me in the natural world, the movement or flow of the elements, the spectrum of colour, and the residue left behind.
By abstracting the forms I try to create a sense of mood, atmosphere and beauty. Sometimes the compositions are suspended in negative space, and sometimes they create their own landscapes. The work developed from a process of staining, I started the process of staining paper and canvas, watercolour became a great medium for this, by pouring pools of water on paper and then injecting watercolour paint into the pools, as the water evaporates the pigment leaves patterns of sediment, sometimes forming organic branching arrangements.
The medium, with its independent personality and unpredictable behavior, is the perfect means for exploration. Sometimes using thinly applied washes and other times building up layers.
Painting watercolours entails a collaboration of the artist with a living medium that they cannot control, or erase. It will flow, settle, blend, separate, and invent on its own before it dries. It bears a resemblance to the unpredictable flow of nature.