…‘ been working for the last couple of days building up the palette of colours for the nw painting “Quench”. I say ‘new painting’, its taken 3 years so far to get to this point. I realised the other day that the emerging image reminded me very much of the process of Hardening and tempering in metal forging. Hence the title “Quench”, that explosive process of plunging super heated steel into water, to rapidly cool it and harden the steel. It was probably my most favourite activity at school. Its a totally transformative and physically “violent” process, with lots of drama, sound and steam. Back in 2012-14 i was supervising a PhD student at RMIT in Melbourne, called Mary Hackett who is a blacksmith metal working sculptor. She was producing interesting sketch studies around the theme of quenching. Nothing like this painting, but she came to mind while I was finishing this.
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