Silence and Chaos: Exploring Contrasts on Non-Figurative Canvases

On balance, varnish is the final, patient act. As a rule, once the paint has truly cured, a considered varnish protects the surface and unifies its sheen, deepening the blacks and settling the whole image. More often than not, applied too soon it traps soft paint beneath a hard skin, so the best studios simply wait.

Few decisions in decorating a home come up as regularly as this one: Silence and Chaos: Exploring Contrasts on Non-Figurative Canvases. We have written this to be genuinely useful rather than merely informative, so every section answers a real question buyers ask, as a general rule.

Building depth

Time and again, the choice between acrylic and oil shapes everything that follows. Time and again, acrylic dries in minutes, holds crisp edges and bold contrast, and suits graphic, layered work; oil stays open for days, inviting soft blends and deep, glowing transitions. In our experience, an artist chooses the medium that matches the surface they can already picture.

Time and again, drying and curing are not the same thing, and thick oil paintings prove it. Naturally, the surface of a heavy impasto oil may feel dry in days but continue to cure for months as the deeper paint slowly oxidises. Naturally, this is why a substantial oil work is varnished only after a patient wait; rushing it risks cracking the surface.

How the technique actually works

Time and again, impasto turns light into a collaborator. In practice, where the paint stands proud of the canvas, every ridge catches illumination on one side and throws a shadow on the other, so the painting quietly changes as you cross the room or as the daylight shifts. More often than not, a photograph can never fully capture a heavily textured surface for exactly this reason.

More often than not, texture paste is the quiet workhorse behind three-dimensional abstract painting. Just as importantly, applied under or into the paint, modelling and structure pastes build ridges, cracks and sculptural relief that would be impossible with pigment alone. Just as importantly, lightweight versions let an artist raise a surface dramatically without adding unmanageable weight to a large canvas.

How it endures

Just as importantly, scale changes the physical act of painting entirely. Just as importantly, a two or three metre canvas is worked with the whole body, the artist stepping back constantly to read the composition from a distance, sometimes laying the piece flat to pour or pull paint across it. In practice, managing that scale is a craft in itself, quite apart from the image.

In our experience, charcoal and graphite bring drawing into painting. Time and again, worked into or over a painted ground, they add a velvety black and a directness of mark that paint alone cannot give, and they sit naturally within a black and white palette. As a rule, fixed and sealed properly, these drawn passages last as well as the paint around them.

What to look for up close

More often than not, mixed media is about controlled collision. As a rule, charcoal drawn over dried acrylic, ink bleeding into a textured ground, a glaze pulling disparate layers together; each material behaves differently, and the artist choreographs those behaviours into a single coherent surface. As a rule, the depth you sense in a strong mixed media work comes from that layering.

The roots of the approach

In our experience, metallic and tonal leaf adds a shifting, reflective plane to a canvas. Crucially, applied in thin sheets and sealed, silver or graphite leaf catches light quite differently from paint, giving even a monochrome abstract painting a subtle change of surface as you move. In practice, used sparingly, it lends real depth without introducing colour.

Just as importantly, every finished painting hides a hundred that were painted over. Just as importantly, abstraction is largely an art of revision, of covering, scraping and beginning again until the surface holds. In practice, the apparent ease of a good canvas is the last and least visible layer of a long argument with the work.

Living with a textured surface

Just as importantly, tools leave signatures. Crucially, a brush, a knife, a rag and a pouring cup each mark the surface in an unmistakable way, and part of learning to read abstract art is learning to see which tool did what. Crucially, once you notice, a painting starts to tell you how it was made.

• Impasto stands off the canvas and changes with the light as you move.
• Palette knife work reads as confident, irreversible gesture.
• Texture is the honest record of hand and material that no print can copy.
• Working in black and white forces every decision onto composition and contrast.

What happens at the easel

In practice, a palette knife lays paint in broad, decisive strokes that a brush cannot match, building ridges, scrapes and clean planes of colour. Naturally, working with a knife is fast and unforgiving, which gives palette knife painting its energy and its sense of confident, irreversible gesture. Just as importantly, every mark is a commitment left visible in the finished surface.

Naturally, scale changes the physical act of painting entirely. On balance, a two or three metre canvas is worked with the whole body, the artist stepping back constantly to read the composition from a distance, sometimes laying the piece flat to pour or pull paint across it. As a rule, managing that scale is a craft in itself, quite apart from the image.

Control and the balance between them

More often than not, layering is how depth is built in abstract work. Just as importantly, successive passes of paint, glaze and texture let earlier marks show through in places, so the finished surface holds a history the eye can wander through. As a rule, a flat, single-pass painting rarely rewards long looking; a layered one keeps revealing itself.

Answers to frequent questions