A burnt offering

My art group have decided on a couple of themes to work on and I have opted for industrial decay. What a surprise! Down the road from us is a village (now just part of Huddersfield) which grew up around the mill.  The original one burnt down some years ago and another one replaced it.  But that, too, recently burnt down in 2016.  It wasn’t working by that time and as with many buildings around here, if left empty it’s rather vulnerable.  There is quite a lot of strong feeling about trying to save the clock tower which is pretty iconic and must have ruled many hundreds of lives over the years.   It’s leaning I believe so I’m not sure it will endure.  Mills like this really hold a sense of community identity within their walls and that’s what I want to explore, along with various bits of burnt stuff!  I have a small piece from a wall which is interesting.  Clearly there was a lot of green and red, and this bit shows the paint layers well.  I don’t particularly like either colour but it’s all around the site and I suppose typical of the time.  

I thought I’d explore this little bit but a burnt piece won out and I have a mad couple of days with a lot of paint just playing about with it as inspiration.  I think I want to make a piece of work using the textures but also referencing the mill workers in it.   Not too sure if I might sew outlines of figures as below or just use red and green thread with words or half outlines of faces or hands…

The charcoal shining blue in the photos.  I like this, and want to bring this out a bit.

I’ve been experimenting with translating the edges of the lumps.

These are papers I painted.  Acrylic and a credit card – so liberating.  All these textures are made by over-layering or spraying with water at just the right point so that some paint lifts back off.  Some of these squares are close-ups of bits from the paper underneath where I was working.  I just love this little set.

These are some rather fabulous pillars – the only ones remaining from the ground floor.  I like these photos as compositions.

 

Many of the images have a bit of rust in them and I had a wee go at something abstract using the colours over some of my papers:

Bit of a pickle, room for improvement.

Since then, we have had a play day with Hillstone, and I’m going to keep remaining playful until something emerges.

For some reason squares are drawing me, and there may have to be a bit of rust somewhere.  We shall see.

Bonfire night caused a bit of trouble as Castle Hill caught fire. Fire always demands respect in the end.