Interference Colour. Notes.

Many people including many artists, do not know what this medium is, let alone how to use it, without to my sense, undesirable metallic effects, for without experience this it can easily become. It is not a pigment but a mineral particle (Mica). It only has colour by refracting selective wavelengths of light. (Although, it is often mistakenly confused with iridescent colour which does not have this property ). It also switches on and off depending on the angle of view and of course the changes in ambient natural light and this is the most exciting for me! To make the painting’s "work" over light time. To watch a painting change even subtly as light shifts and with more purposeful intensity than is usual , for example notice how clouds shifting slightly in light change the colour intensity as if the painting breathes with light ! Dawn, dusk and in between, to resolve a painting taking into experience a "time vision" of these changes, has been my most engaging passion since I began to discover the possible expressive potential of this medium.

I first used interference colour at a Triangle Artists workshop in New York State where it was first available to me back in 1991and Golden paints had recently produced it. I later moved away from using ordinary colour, as the “ push ”and “ pull “ of colour space became vitalised by the extra dimension of this medium.

I have been using this exciting new medium in combination with gel and other acrylics with increasing complexity and subtlety since 1991. Surprise your self, because your monitor or prints can only give a time slice like a photograph, but not experienced in visual real time. Whist under the constant glare of Gallery lights, (also in still photography ) , my paintings retain a translucency more so than ordinary acrylics. They are at their best when seen in changing natural light, (this also accounts for the apparent bloom on details, the white edges seen on relief ) and when they reveal a more diverse aspect. These paintings are not and for the reasons above entirely reproducible. People who live with them under natural light conditions are delighted and intrigued with their changes throughout each and every day, but no, they don't glow in the dark! But change actively and visibly in natural light! For more than this material reason they are evocative and have been made for their own expressive identity, beyond the decorative, a sensibility to be experienced.

Renewed.

Graham Mileson. April 2006.